A professor proposes that behavior emerges through continuous interactions among sensory, sensorimotor, and motor processes rather than a dedicated decision-making mechanism.

There may be a gap between how people believe decisions are made and what actually happens inside the brain, according to Indiana University professor Tom James.

For decades, both scientific theories and everyday thinking have treated decision-making as a separate step between perception and action. Under this traditional view, information moves through a linear sequence from sensing to thinking to acting, with each stage linked to a distinct brain function.