Predicting the Will

Interesting Peice from Scientific American on the prediction of will:


Neuroscience supports this belief. The late physiologist Benjamin Libet noted in EEG readings of subjects engaged in a task requiring them to press a button when they felt like it that half a second before the decision was consciously made the brain's motor cortex lit up. Research has extended the time between subcortical brain activation and conscious awareness to a full seven to 10 seconds. A new study found activity in a tiny clump of 256 neurons that enabled scientists to predict with 80 percent accuracy which choice a subject would make before the person himself knew. Very likely, just before I became consciously aware of my menu selections, part of my brain had already made those choices. “Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control,” Harris concludes. “We do not have the freedom we think we have.”


Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-free-will-collides-with-unconscious-impulses
Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/C2CAA889-979E-BACC-B8467A9CA1C4FA51_1.jpg