Thursday, November 20, 2008

What you choose is your choice.

Brilliant "Radio Lab" podcast this week, about choice and neurology.

One of the scariest recent discoveries, for me, is the whole business about deciding before you decide-according to MRI studies, your brain makes a decision before you are aware of it. For example, a person in an MRI machine is told to pick between colors or shapes, and to raise their hand the moment they have decided which one. The thing is that the brain shows the decision making activity before the subject signals they have decided.

So you decide before you decide. Wierd.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, this definitely scares me a smidge...

    I'm lying..it scares me a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And what's worse...you were scared before you were scared!

    ReplyDelete

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