Free will might have been the province of philosophers until now, but we've cracked the problem with an MRI.
Neuroscientists from Johns Hopkins report in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics that they were able to see both what happens in a human brain the moment a free choice is made, and what happens during the lead-up to that decision -- how activity in the brain changes during the deliberation over whether to act.
The team devised a novel way to track a participant's focus without using cues or commands, avoiding a Schrodinger's-like dilemma of altering the process of choice by calling attention to it. Participants took positions in MRI scanners, and then were left alone to watch a split screen as rapid streams of colorful numbers and letters scrolled past on both sides.
They were asked just to pay attention to one side for a while, then to the other side.
When to switch sides, and for how long to look, was entirely up to them.
Over the duration of the experiment, the participants glanced back and forth, switching sides dozens of times. In terms of connectivity in the brain, the actual process of switching attention from one side to the other was tightly linked with activity in the parietal lobe, which is sort of the top back quadrant of the brain.
Activity during the period of deliberation before a choice took place in the frontal cortex, which engages in reasoning and plans movement.
Deliberation also lit up the basal ganglia, important parts of the deep brain that handle motor control, including the initiation of motion.
Participants' frontal-lobe activity began earlier than it would have if participants had been cued to shift attention, which demonstrates that the brain was planning a voluntary action rather than merely following an order.
***
Military researchers have been trying to make fighting men who have no compunction when it comes to killing humans on the battle field.
Also they want to eliminate reactive disorder problems of the battle field.
The disorder is called Prolonged Duress Stress Disorder, or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PDSD.
C-PTSD is another name for this hurtful mental illness.
You’ll also see it called Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Complex Traumatic Stress Disorder, Cumulative Stress Disorder, Complex Trauma Disorder, and Chronic Stress Disorder.
If they can control parts of the brain they can achieve their goals in eliminating the above symptoms in fighting men.
Sociopaths have no problem harming others, no remorse or conscience.
They tend to have a lack of empathy for other people.
If the researchers succeed in their goal they will only have created sociopaths with a lack of conscience.
No comments:
Post a Comment