These experiments show that the brain makes decisions prior to you being aware you made a decision. This is something to mull over a while, and is a little unsettling. Basically, this could indicate that the concept that your behavior is based on your active decision-making is in incorrect. Your brain may decide your behavior, and your active decision-making is an illusion of your brain.

Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them: “You may think you decided to read this story — but in fact, your brain made the decision long before you knew about it.

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people’s decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.

The decision studied — whether to hit a button with one’s left or right hand — may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?

‘Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done,’ said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist.”

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