"Volition and inhibition: not "free will" but "free won't"

[xchrom]

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Volition/and/inhibition/not/free/will/but/free/won/t/elpepusoc/20110902elpepusoc_4/Tes

Surprisingly, experimental evidence seems to show that the subjective experience of free will is something of a perceptual illusion and that unconscious mental processes begin some time before we become aware of our intention to act. A milestone piece of research on which this claim is based is that of Benjamin Libet and colleagues, who were studying free will at the beginning of the 1980s. This group asked study participants to press a button as soon as they felt the urge to do so, and at the same time recorded their brain activity from scalp electrodes. It turned out that the subjects' conscious decision to press the button was preceded by the onset of brain electrical activity by a few hundred milliseconds.

This experiment has been replicated very recently using functional magnetic resonance imaging?a technique that allows visualisation of changes in brain activity as a patient performs a task. Tests showed that brain activity in the prefrontal and parietal cortex of the brain determined the outcome of a decision up to 10 seconds before the participant was aware of it.

Other studies have shown that the simple sight of a graspable object appears to activate, to some degree, the region of the brain that controls the body part involved in the potential action, even when the person isn't planning to move. Therefore, cues in our environment may inadvertently trigger potential actions.

If such processes were the source of our voluntary actions, then our nervous system would generate movements on the basis of external inputs and would not just rely on our will. According to this view, the subjective experience of consciously deciding to execute an action could simply be a "side effect" of the brain processes implementing the movement.