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Brain correlates of subjective freedom of choice.

Filevich, E; Vanneste, P; Brass, M; Fias, W; Haggard, P; Kühn, S; (2013) Brain correlates of subjective freedom of choice. Consciousness and Cognition , 22 (4) 1271 - 1284. 10.1016/j.concog.2013.08.011. Green open access

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Abstract

The subjective feeling of free choice is an important feature of human experience. Experimental tasks have typically studied free choice by contrasting free and instructed selection of response alternatives. These tasks have been criticised, and it remains unclear how they relate to the subjective feeling of freely choosing. We replicated previous findings of the fMRI correlates of free choice, defined objectively. We introduced a novel task in which participants could experience and report a graded sense of free choice. BOLD responses for conditions subjectively experienced as free identified a postcentral area distinct from the areas typically considered to be involved in free action. Thus, the brain correlates of subjective feeling of free action were not directly related to any established brain correlates of objectively-defined free action. Our results call into question traditional assumptions about the relation between subjective experience of choosing and activity in the brain's so-called voluntary motor areas.

Type: Article
Title: Brain correlates of subjective freedom of choice.
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.08.011
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2013.08.011
Language: English
Keywords: Free choice, Introspection, Volition, fMRI
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1424998
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