I'm not sure I get this. So ten seconds before I knew I wanted to type this sentence, my brain had already made the decision? That doesn't make sense to me.

The abstract says "up to 10 seconds".

Our brains use "population coding" - basically neaural consensus - for many purposes. Perhaps consensus can be "polled" by our instruments before we can make use of it.

@ adamczar: From how I read the abstract it seems more like your mind contemplated responding, but not necessarily in the way you did. Basically, your mind assesses the possible reactions but doesn't decide which action to take until it reaches the conscious mind. For example, if you see a button your mind assesses that the possible reactions are to either press the button or to not press the button.

I guess that explains why reflexive actions happen so much quicker than we can think about them. If we had a reliable interface, I guess we could all move like Spiderman!

Some people's minds are YEARS behind the present.

I always thought life was much easier when you don't bother to think at all. Now that I realize it also buys me the benefits of extra time, I am going to use it to stick more objects in my nose.

Better to read this as certain types of decisions are made before we acknowledge that we made them. Most of the decisions made in these studies seems to be motor function decisions "do I use this hand or that hand?" etc. People are already known to have set habits and "subroutines", like how we know all the movements of how to walk without having to think anything beyond "walk over there". I'm not surprised that many motor decisions are made by something other than cognition. If I had to decide every nuance of motor function all day, nothing would get done. I decide I want to perform certain actions, but I don't decide hand or how unless I am being particular. Now if the study is showing people decide something abstract or conceptual not involving motor habits or systems BEFORE cognition/thought does, that would be pretty freaky.

Out = Give me a second.
In = Give me 10 seconds.

@adamczar: Now does it?

From what i read on the blog, my (probably oversimplified) interpretation is that potential choices begin to manifest in the brain before our consciousness is aware of beginning to make a decision.

I still have my doubts about free will, but this study isn't necessarily a nail in that coffin.

10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
What???!!

Consciousness is just one part of the prefontal lobe. Does it surprise anyone that the rest of the brain does stuff too? Also, does it suprise anyone that caclulations are performed before an answer is reached? Our brains are pretty cool, but they can't break the laws of physics. It takes time for the brain to calculate anything.

This has all happened before, and this will all happen again....

Michael Polanyi called such information tacit: the body knows much more than it can tell.... and now we've got the stats, yo.

As someone who doesn't think we have contra-causal free will, I don't think the idea of no free will is too horrible. But I can certainly see how people who haven't seriously considered the possibility before could find it disturbing.

Yeah, being robbed of free will is kind of like being robbed of a solid gold nougat-filled Rolls-Royce. It would be a tragedy to lose it if you ever had it in the first place, but you don't, so don't worry about it.

I can only assume a Rolls-Royce is some kind of candy bar, to be filled with gold nougat.

Hopefully it's tasty. Well, I hope it would have been tasty, since you lost yours. I'm out to find one now. I might invent one if I have to.

It is my will.

What about the study that showed nano tubules activate before sensory information is recieved in the brain? That might mean that the future is really being "seen" before our nervous system is activated. Which means we are creating the future, but experiencing it as the present, but it's really the past. Go figure.

Here's a discussion of the paper by a skeptical neurologist.

It's already known that visual perception interpolates forward to deal with processing lag. Why would anyone expect consciousness to be able to function in real time. Like Brock already suggested, I bet these pre-choice signals are nothing more than preparations for actions that environment happens to afford. If they are preparations, then the conscious selection signal could be a trigger to begin specific prepared process.

Anyway, choosing between two buttons in a laboratory is way too far from any actual situation to base much faith on this result.

It sounds more to me like our "subconscious" is "as much as" 10 seconds ahead.

Please tell me that there aren't really people out there that actually believe that they are automatons without free will. If they're out there, they're probably very proud of their reasoning ability, even though they had no choice but to believe that. And no, having free will does not necessarily mean that this hasn't all happened before and will all happen again.