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Neuroimaging

Free will?

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 9, pages 410–411 (2008)Cite this article

Volunteers were placed in a functional MRI scanner and were asked to press a button with either their left or their right index finger whenever they wanted to. Throughout the experiment the volunteers watched a screen that showed a succession of letters, and they had to remember the letter that was presented on the screen at the moment they made the decision which button to press. This revealed that most of the decisions were consciously formed 1 second before the motor response was executed.

The authors then analyzed the activity in different brain areas during the time preceding the button press, using pattern-based decoders. This type of analysis can detect 'signature' patterns of activity that are associated with a particular decision. The authors found such patterns of activity in Brodmann area 10 and in the parietal cortex (the precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex) — areas that are thought to be involved in executive function and self-processing — and the patterns predicted with high accuracy which button would be pressed. Intriguingly, the signatures appeared up to 7 seconds before the volunteers consciously chose their motor response. Because the haemodynamic blood-oxygen-level-dependent response is thought to represent neuronal activity that occurred about 3 seconds earlier, this finding suggests that activity in the two areas encodes decisions approximately 10 seconds before they enter consciousness.

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Soon, C. S. et al. Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neurosci. 11, 543–545 (2008)

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FURTHER READING

  1. Haynes, J. -D. & Rees, G. Decoding mental states from brain activity in humans. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 7, 523–534 (2006)

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Authors
  1. Leonie Welberg
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Welberg, L. Free will?. Nat Rev Neurosci 9, 410–411 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2404

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2404

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