Infrastructure built to protect cities from flooding can increase economic damages elsewhere.
Image credit: Michelle A. Hummel.
Edited by Marcus E. Raichle, Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and approved February 22, 2013 (received for review July 19, 2012)
Abstract
Unconscious neural activity has been repeatedly shown to precede and potentially even influence subsequent free decisions. However, to date, such findings have been mostly restricted to simple motor choices, and despite considerable debate, there is no evidence that the outcome of more complex free decisions can be predicted from prior brain signals. Here, we show that the outcome of a free decision to either add or subtract numbers can already be decoded from neural activity in medial prefrontal and parietal cortex 4 s before the participant reports they are consciously making their choice. These choice-predictive signals co-occurred with the so-called default mode brain activity pattern that was still dominant at the time when the choice-predictive signals occurred. Our results suggest that unconscious preparation of free choices is not restricted to motor preparation. Instead, decisions at multiple scales of abstraction evolve from the dynamics of preceding brain activity.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: chunsiong.soon{at}duke-nus.edu.sg or haynes{at}bccn-berlin.de.
Author contributions: C.S.S., A.H.H., S.B., and J.-D.H. designed research; C.S.S., A.H.H., and S.B. performed research; C.S.S. and J.-D.H. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; C.S.S., A.H.H., and S.B. analyzed data; and C.S.S., A.H.H., S.B., and J.-D.H. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1212218110/-/DCSupplemental.
Decoding abstract intentions
Article Classifications
- Biological Sciences
- Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
- Social Sciences
- Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Sign up for Article Alerts
Jump to section
You May Also be Interested in
Phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere can be explained without biogenic sources and is consistent with ongoing volcanism on Venus.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/NASA.
A study finds underreporting of COVID-19 cases in the United States and that the United States is likely far from achieving herd immunity through infection alone.
Image credit: Pixabay/geralt.
For decades, vitamin A deficiency has killed millions of children in less-developed countries. More governments should enlist Golden Rice to help.
Image credit: International Rice Research Institute.
Eyeing the effects of the Anthropocene, researchers offer a novel framework to identify and combine models from across the physical and social sciences.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Victor Lauer.