Asked another way: Have there been legit studies done that detected what someone would do before they were aware of it? If so, what are they/where can I read about them?
For example of the concept, I’m sitting in a chair and at some point I will decide when to stand up. I decide to stand up…right now. However, the scientists knew I would stand up before I knew I would (before the right now in the dots…) - their machines detected my decision in my brain before I was aware I was going to do it.
Here is an example of a study re: what I’m talking about for context:
As early as the 1960s, studies found that when people perform a simple, spontaneous movement, their brain exhibits a buildup in neural activity—what neuroscientists call a “readiness potential”—before they move. In the 1980s, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet reported this readiness potential even preceded a person’s reported intention to move, not just their movement. In 2008 a group of researchers found that some information about an upcoming decision is present in the brain up to 10 seconds in advance, long before people reported making the decision of when or how to act.
My main problem is I’m not good at judging the quality of sources on this stuff when I google it and get a bunch of results (like the above - is that bad science, a one-off I can ignore, or is it true and/or any consensus on this). A tag-along question might be, where is a good place to learn about this.
Type in the title of that 1983 paper into Google Scholar and you can get a link to 4163 more recent papers that have cited it. I enjoyed the title of this 2017 paper: Sense of Agency in the Human Brain. It isn’t a great fit for your topic, but you can flip through the references to find papers that are more appropriate.
Wiki is often a good starting place, read critically. They have a lengthy bio on Benjamin Libet - Wikipedia.
The notion that the readiness potential acts as an unconscious cause of spontaneous activity has come under severe fire. Most notably, it also occurs as a random fluctuation without causing any sort of action—it’s just the sort of thing complex systems sometimes do. What rather seems to have happened in the Libet experiments is that it acted as a sort of symmetry breaker, something that tipped the scales in a brain already poised to make a decision, and enabled the translation of that decision into action. Think of it like one of these paternoster lifts, where cabins are continually carried up. You stand outside, waiting for the next cabin to pass, and enter it to move up; but even though one could detect that cabin going up before you use it to ascend (to bring a decided action to bear, in the image), that doesn’t mean that the paternoster cabin is what caused you to do so.
This is borne out by experiments in which the neural activity of probands that are instructed not to act is compared to that of people that do perform some action at their leisure:
To avoid unintentionally cherry-picking brain noise, they included a control condition in which people didn’t move at all. An artificial-intelligence classifier allowed them to find at what point brain activity in the two conditions diverged. If Libet was right, that should have happened at 500 milliseconds before the movement. But the algorithm couldn’t tell any difference until about only 150 milliseconds before the movement, the time people reported making decisions in Libet’s original experiment. [source]
So at least that particular signal does not seem to grant the ability to predict actions before you’re aware of them.
I believe that there was a The Nature of Things (a CBC science show) episode from a few years ago that touched on this; I’m trying to find the actual episode. In it they showed an experiment in which participants’ brain activities were monitored when the participants had to make a decision. If I recall correctly, the brain signals indicated that the brain had made the decision before the participants had consciously made the same decision.
Did they show the brain couldn’t still change it’s mind after this signaling? And what kind of time frame are we talking about? Was this test determining when people decided to act in one specific instance or with a choice between actions? This sounds more like a click bait headline with an exaggerated description of expected behavior.
I don’t believe that The Nature of Things is click bait but I can understand your concerns. And IANA scientist so I can’t clearly speak to that.
Again I saw it a few years ago and I don’t recall exactly when, however, what I remember is a computer-based test during which the participants select from two (or possibly more) options. The brain readings would indicate what the selection would be before the participant actually made the selection. I don’t remember the magnitude of the time period.
I’ll see if I can find that and check it out. Those types of shows are right up my alley.
What you’re describing is basically what I saw/understood before posting.
However, based upon the links and suggestions above, this cannot be described so clear cut. Just reading the wiki on Benjamin Libet was very informative and a good start for me.
I’m getting the sense we’re in the middle of the grinding out the answer part…science doing its thing. One study seems pretty spot on, another will say not so fast, and on and on. Mostly good science by honest brokers but that we’re just in the middle of it with no clear and broad conclusions.
However, the are less than honest brokers who are cherry picking the studies and claiming we now have a definitive answer. This is where I get lost and can’t tell the good from the bad. I don’t have a sense for it like I do in other areas.
That’s just my hot take and could be off the mark. Regardless, it’s certainly fascinating and worth taking a deep dive.
If you aren’t Canadian, the show was, until recently, hosted by David Suzuki (David Suzuki - Wikipedia) who is a geneticist who is sort of a Canadian icon of science and particularly the environment. And The Nature of Things (The Nature of Things - Wikipedia) has been presented by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) since 1960.
I didn’t mean it was some kind of scam however any publication could be using a come-on title or description of an article or paper.
I think the testing and study are providing valuable information on the subject. I don’t think there was any doubt that our brains make decisions below the level of a conscious argument over the merits of the choices. It wouldn’t be an instantaneous process as @DPRK notes. Studying how the underlying process manifests and the time involved is worthwhile but even the thread title is misleading, it’s not about scientist’s predictions, it’s about measurement of a time lag in the process.
Understood but these are valid issues. AFAIK it’s a solid popular science show but, unless someone is familiar with it, as far as they’re concerned, I could be referring to some BS “alternative facts” site.
Statisticians can predict, with some accuracy, what products will be bought and what pets, clothes, foods and drinks will be preferred by region and nationality. No good for predicting a specific person’s future actions, but good enough for businesses to make reliable profit.
