Fig. 6

Integration of the presented enactive and functional views. This figure integrates the enactive view of the brain–body–environment system and the functional view of brain structure in a behavioral organization, where sensory interoceptive and exteroceptive poles interact with the limbic and motor poles to decide for the main characteristics of the behavior. Basically, addressing the four fundamental questions results in specifying sensory constraints in the motor pole related to the position in space and to the body, and in the interoceptive pole related to pain and pleasure and to fundamental needs. This will define preferences and motivations in the limbic pole, generating directly a consummatory behavior or organizing a preparatory behavior with the motor pole that can particularly trigger movements and evoke selective attention to obtain desired changes in the internal and external world and, accordingly, in the sensory perceptions. Consequently, the general question of control raised in Fig. 1 must be divided up into motivational control monitoring needs, emotional control deciding for goals, attentional control selecting them in the environment, cognitive control organizing properly the behavior in goal-directed strategies and motor control triggering each step in that strategies and for immediate response in habitual behavior. Colors in the picture refer to the colors used in Fig. 5 to evoke fundamental questions