Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2008 May;11(5):543-5.
doi: 10.1038/nn.2112. Epub 2008 Apr 13.

Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain

Chun Siong Soon  1 , Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, John-Dylan Haynes
Affiliations

Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain

Chun Siong Soon et al. Nat Neurosci. 2008 May.

Abstract

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. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types