Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2011 Apr;1224:9-21. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.05994.x.
There has been a long debate on the existence of brain signals that precede the outcome of decisions, even before subjects believe they are consciously making up their mind. The framework of multivariate decoding provides a novel tool for investigating such choice-predictive information contained in neural signals leading up to a decision. New results show that the specific outcome of free choices between different plans can be interpreted from brain activity, not only after a decision has been made, but even several seconds before it is made. This suggests that a causal chain of events can occur outside subjective awareness even before a subject makes up his/her mind. An important future line of research would be to develop paradigms that allow feedback of real-time predictions of future decisions to reveal whether such decisions can still be reverted. This would shed light on how tight the causal link is between early predictive brain signals and subsequent decisions.
长期以来，人们一直在争论是否存在大脑信号先于决策结果出现的现象，甚至在受试者认为自己在有意识地做出决定之前就已经存在了。多元解码框架为研究决策前神经信号中包含的这种选择预测信息提供了一种新的工具。新的研究结果表明，不仅在做出决定之后，甚至在做出决定之前几秒钟，就可以从大脑活动中解读出在不同方案之间进行自由选择的具体结果。这表明，即使在一个人做出决定之前，事件的因果链也可能在主观意识之外发生。一个重要的未来研究方向是开发允许实时预测未来决策的反馈的范式，以揭示这样的决策是否仍然可以逆转。这将有助于了解早期预测性脑信号与随后的决策之间的因果联系有多紧密。
