GERMANY:SEVEN SECONDS ago, German scientists could have predicted that you were going to read this article.
The scientists, at Leipzig's Max Planck Institute, say they have discovered how to predict decisions the human brain makes, seven seconds before it is expressed.
The remarkable study in the Nature Neuroscience online journal goes to the heart of questions asked by philosophers for two millenniums: is free will really free at all? And are humans really in control of their own destiny?
In the experiment, scientists asked subjects to pick a letter from a sequence flashed on a screen, pressing a button with either their left or right index finger as they did so.
Scientists were surprised when sensors reading the subject's brainwaves suggested a decision had been made several seconds before subjects decided which button to press, and when.
"It seems that your brain starts to trigger your decision before you make up your mind," said Prof John-Dylan Haynes, head of the project at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
"We can't rule out free will, but I think it's very implausible. The question is, can we still decide against the decision our brain has made?"
The Leipzig project builds on the work of the late American neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet. He discovered what he called the "readiness potential", a signal the brain sends a millisecond before a conscious decision is made.
While he thought this split second did not allow humans to consciously initiate actions, he suggested it did allow time to veto.
The German team said they found an even longer gap between decision and action - on average seven seconds - after studying two areas of the brain involved in decision-making: the frontopolar cortex and the parietal cortex.
The team said the results could have applications, such as prosthetic limbs with computer interfaces that predict the user's movements. It could also take us one step closer to the Stephen Spielberg film Minority Report, where police officers in the future stop crimes before they happen.
The continuing Leipzig project could eventually raise questions about whether, for instance, a criminal can be held morally responsible for his actions.
"It would lead to no one being held responsible for anything," said Prof Haynes.
An entire generation of future politicians licks its lips.
