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Brief Communication

Nature Neuroscience 11, 543–545 (1 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/nn.2112

Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain

Chun Siong Soon , Marcel Brass , Hans-Jochen Heinze & John-Dylan Haynes

There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness.