Human thinking controls behavior. What controls thinking?
So there's a great phrase that we in cognitive neuroscience like to use, which is "chasing the homunculus". If you're not familiar with the term "homunculus", it literally means "little man", and it's used semi-pejoratively to refer to the notion you're talking about here. For example, neurologically (simplified, of course):
our behavior most obviously manifests by our actionsrnactions are motor responsesrnmotor responses are made active by muscle contractionsrnmuscle contractions are caused by neurons exciting muscle tissuernthose neurons are excited by neurons in the spinal cordrnthe spinal cord receives input from the motor cortexrnthe motor cortex is excited by the premotor cortexrnthe premotor cortex translates intention to actionrnthe premotor cortex receives input from various subregions of the prefrontal cortex (that may or mot be meaningful designations)
the prefrontal cortex is important for attention and decision-making
What is attending? What is making the decisions? We can keep chasing this all the way, but we're running out of a "top". Or, as my friend put as the title in his review in the journal Neuron, we're, "Searching for the 'top' in top-down control".
Personally, I don't think there's a "top". We're a complex feedback system of perception and action with updating and memory.
This isn't an excellent answer, maybe... but it's the best this neuroscientist can do. Please let me know if this makes sense.
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