The Libet Experiment
Does The Conscious Mind Decide?
Benjamin Libet experimented in the 1980s to investigate whether hand movements happened after the conscious decision to move one's hand.
He used an EEG machine to measure brain activity and found that brain activity occured hundreds of millisecconds before the conscious decision to move the hand.
In other words movement started before the individual will could decide to do so.
Is There Free Will?
Some take this as evidence that free will is an illusion.
Find Out More
The Libet Experiment: Is Free Will Just an Illusion?
Attributions Wikipedia image: Version 1 by Nohat (concept by Paullusmagnus); Wikimedia., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
