First-person approaches in neuroscience of consciousness: brain dynamics correlate with the intention to act.
The belief in free will has been frequently challenged since Benjamin Libet published his famous experiment in 1983. Although Libet's experiment is highly dependent upon subjective reports, no study has been conducted that focused on a first-person or introspective perspective of the task. We took a neurophenomenological approach in an N=1 study providing reliable and valid measures of the first-person perspective in conjunction with brain dynamics. We found that a larger readiness potential (RP) is attributable to more frequent occurrences of self-initiated movements during negative deflections of the slow cortical potentials (SCP). These negative deflections occur in parallel with an inner impulse reported by an expert meditator which may in turn lead to a voluntary act. We demonstrate in this proof-of-principle approach that the first-person perspective obtained by an expert meditator in conjunction with neural signal analysis can contribute to our understanding of the neural underpinnings of voluntary acts.
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany; Institute for Transcultural Health Studies, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany.
Han-Gue
HG
Jo
Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany.
Marc
M
Wittmann
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
Tilmann Lhündrup
TL
Borghardt
Research Section of Applied Consciousness Sciences, Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Center Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Thilo
T
Hinterberger
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany; Institute for Transcultural Health Studies, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Electronic address: stefan.schmidt@uniklinik-freiburg.de.
Stefan
S
Schmidt
D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D014836:Volition / Q000502:physiology*
First-person data; Intention to act; Libet experiment; Neurophenomenology; Readiness potential; Slow cortical potential