Brainscans of future thought

Researchers using brain scans have shown that decisions are made in the subconscious several seconds before we're even consciously aware of them. Scientists at Berlin's Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience used fMRI to watch their subjects' brains as they were asked to tap a button whenever they wanted to. Turns out, the prefrontal cortex lit up seven seconds before the volunteers ever hit the button. They published their research in the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience. From New Scientist:

"It seems that the brain is making the decision before the person themselves," (says neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes.)

Although we make some choices in a heartbeat, Haynes thinks his experiment captures the dawdling tempo of daily life.

"In most cases, we decide internally in a self-paced way: 'Now I want to get some orange juice' or 'I'm going to get some apple juice instead','" he says

Our brains might pick beverages long before we realise, but Haynes thinks such decisions are still a matter of choice. "My conscious will is consistent with my unconscious will – it's the same process," he says.

Link to New Scientist, Link to Nature Neuroscience abstract

• [jody]

  This aligns nicely with Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta, which basically holds that our sense of ourselves as individual beings is quite illusory and unnecessary for us to function in the world. Many spiritual gurus who aren’t flimflammers know this as an experiential fact. Bear in mind, Shankara said this all in the 8th century A.C.

• [ornith]

  I find this study interesting not only for its actual content, but for how it’s being reported.

  The Philly version of Metro discussed this, but pulled out a quote saying this proves the NON-existence of free will (because the brain is deciding before the mind knows it has). Meaning we can safely say that we’ve neither proved nor disproved free will with this.

  I’m guessing that it’s not that we haven’t “decided” in our mind, but that the extra time is what it takes to *articulate* the decision; deciding to move happens in a more primitive part of the brain than language.

  This does lend a lot of support to the idea seen in sports and martial arts that you can screw yourself up by “overthinking” – you’re putting in a major delay by waiting until you know you’ve decided, instead of just acting without articulating the decision to yourself.

  @6 Greenglyph: Actually, aside from the meditators part, they’ve already done those studies – albeit with an implanted chip to get clearer neural signals. But they’ve had success with ordinary monkeys, and the first human trial subject could control a cursor pretty well within only a few days. Look up “BrainGate” for more on this; it’s seriously awesome stuff, and not just because it involves cyborg monkeys.

• [Lexica]

  “It seems that the brain is making the decision before the person themselves,” (says neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes.)

  I keep coming back to this sentence. I think it’s the most extreme example of the insistence on differentiating between mind/”self” and body that I’ve seen in a long time. How can a person’s brain make a decision before “the person themself” does? How does this researcher define “the person themself”, if it’s something so separate from the brain and its activity? Interesting.

• [Avram]

  Daniel Dennett’s 1991 book Consciousness Explained mentioned some experimental results showing something along these lines. I don’t remember when the experiments took place.

  Anyway, it’s nice to see new research with new technologies verifying those earlier results. I don’t remember the gap being as long as seven seconds, though. Wow.

• [kkennedy]

  The Illusion of Conscious Will, by Daniel Wegner, also delves into this subject in some detail, and is well worth reading if you’re into the subject. Point: as noted in both the title of Wegner’s book, and in the article above, the illusion is of “conscious will”, not “free will”. There’s no question that the decisions are indeed being made in your brain; it’s just that the little person that sits in our head and thinks that they’re in charge…well, they may not be. They may be, in a sense, working with echoes of what has already been decided at a deeper level, and just thinking “they” (ie, the conscious you) came up with it. Weird to wrap your head around…but the evidence does seem to point that way.

• [mark_at_flickeringpictures]

  I just blogged on this too, and just because our actions can be predicted, doesn’t mean we’re not free to choose them. We may have natural predispositions that can be overcome through conscious or even unconscious thought – like deciding to break the habit of reaching for that smoke after a big meal.

  I’ve got to believe that with all the raw creative power out there, we’re not just cogs with tiny, predetermined roles to play in a great random cosmic machine, and that free will isn’t just an illusion created by the chemicals sloshing around our brains.

  Or then again, maybe that’s just what our cosmic overlords *want* us to think…

• [greenglyph]

  Might this “pre-conscious” brain activity not imply some kind of metaconsciousness– that is, neural activity that precedes “consciousness”, but is no less intentional with regard to being part of a feedback loop between a being and their environment? Is it also possible that we simply don’t often pay attention to these signals internally because they don’t manifest linguistically in our minds but in some more primitive, subtle way?

  I’d be interested in seeing the results of a study in which practiced meditators of various disciplines attempt to recreate only this kind of brain activity, but not the resultant action. (i.e. pressing the button *in* the mind, but not in the world).

• [glace neuf]

  i’m surprised nobody jumped on a minority report chain with this story. pretty crazy stuff!

• [vjinterkosmos]

  Student: “Master, tell me, what am I?”

  Master: “Now, what would you do with an I?”

• [dustbuster7000]

  As interesting as all this is, I think part of the issue/problem with these experiments is the conclusions being drawn by the scientists about what fMRI images actually mean. I’ve been lucky enough to run into (through friends) a few people who work in cognitive science research and their opinion seems to be that fMRI is not as the great and wonderful tool that its held out to be by many in the scientific and journalistic communities. Certainly it’s very useful, and provides all sorts of interesting and new information about the brain and how its operates. I’m not a neuro-scientist, but when researchers in the field are expressing their reservations about the rigor of experimental design and conclusions drawn, you need to think about adding salt to your mental diet. Something about extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence comes to mind.

• [david85282]

  What would happen if the researchers gave the subjects a small shock each time the prefrontal cortex lit up? Would they ever press the button?

• [Davin]

  There’s a bit of a logical leap in the interpretation of these results. Neurobiology is rarely as simple as cause->effect, but the activation does lend itself to the interpretation that the root of the thought is created before the thought is conscious.

  I’d love to see some work with more complicated tasks. Also, were there signals that did not occur before a button push? Could the activation indicate a decision point?

• [Joe]

  I’ve seen this kind of thing discussed before. I’ve long sense concluded that one purpose of the verbal part of your brain is to serve as your lawyer, that is, to come up with explanations and justifications for what the rest of your brain has decided to do.

  That is, the purpose of rational thinking is to rationalize.

• [ErikO23]

  I seem to recall this being discussed on a recent radiolab episode. but when did i recall it?