Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK; Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Lifespan Psychology, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
Conscious Cogn. 2013 Dec;22(4):1271-84. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.08.011. Epub 2013 Sep 8.
The subjective feeling of free choice is an important feature of human experience. Experimental tasks have typically studied free choice by contrasting free and instructed selection of response alternatives. These tasks have been criticised, and it remains unclear how they relate to the subjective feeling of freely choosing. We replicated previous findings of the fMRI correlates of free choice, defined objectively. We introduced a novel task in which participants could experience and report a graded sense of free choice. BOLD responses for conditions subjectively experienced as free identified a postcentral area distinct from the areas typically considered to be involved in free action. Thus, the brain correlates of subjective feeling of free action were not directly related to any established brain correlates of objectively-defined free action. Our results call into question traditional assumptions about the relation between subjective experience of choosing and activity in the brain's so-called voluntary motor areas.
自由选择的主观感受是人类经验的一个重要特征。实验任务通常通过对比自由选择和指令选择反应选择来研究自由选择。这些任务受到了批评,而且它们与自由选择的主观感受的关系仍不清楚。我们复制了先前关于自由选择的 fMRI 相关性的发现,这些发现是客观定义的。我们引入了一个新的任务,其中参与者可以体验和报告一种逐渐增强的自由选择感。主观上感觉自由的条件的 BOLD 反应确定了一个与通常被认为与自由行动相关的区域不同的后中央区域。因此,主观自由行动的感觉与大脑中所谓的自愿运动区域的任何既定的自由行动的大脑相关性并没有直接关系。我们的结果对选择的主观体验与大脑所谓的自愿运动区域的活动之间的关系的传统假设提出了质疑。