How motivation works inside the brain

Our brains are parallel computing systems. Billions of neurons and trillions of synapses all fire independently. Yet, we can only take one action at a time. For example, we can't sit and jog at the same time.

The basal ganglia is situated in the brain's neocortex and receive inputs from many cortical regions, such as your frontal cortex (thinking, working memory) and motor cortex (physical actions). It controls which action to support based on which set of activities will lead to the best rewards. But the system is very short-sighted.