Future Actions Predicted From Brain Activity 72
An anonymous reader writes "Bringing the real world into the brain scanner, researchers say they can now determine the action a person was planning, mere moments before that action is actually executed. In the study at the University of Western Ontario, human subjects had their brain activity scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they performed one of three hand movements. By using the signals from many brain regions, the researchers could predict, better than chance, which of the actions the volunteer was merely intending to do, seconds later."
Re:How soon (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure I saw in some BBC program (Horizon?) a claim that it was possible to use this technology to predict a person's action not only before they did it but before they even became *aware* of the decision they were going to make
Either bullshit or quite unsettling.
There is a middle ground in this case between "untrue" and "bad." I've seen the same studies, showing (theoretically) that what we're going to do is already decided before we actually carry out the action, but it doesn't necessarily negate the idea of freewill or anything like that. The mind is not a simple machine, it is incredibly complex and your consciousness only represents, and is only aware of, a fraction of all the activity going on. There are subconscious feelings you don't fully realize you have or don't realize how they will impact certain decisions, there are autonomous responses that will kick in before you get the chance to think about an action, there are trained reflexes that short-circuit the regular decision making process. At least one such study claims that many actions are started "automatically" but higher levels of consciousness then have the option to veto it before it's actually carried out. This is probably exactly how people can literally have second thoughts about actions (although for a lot of people there are unfortunate cases where the conscious mind is a little late and tries to veto the action after it's already being carried out.)
So no, neither our thoughts nor our actions are under 100% conscious control all the time, but that's not anything that anyone with even a basic understanding of human nature didn't know already.