the.com/readiness potential
your brain signs the decision memo before you know you had a meeting.
means a slow buildup of electrical activity in the brain measurable up to a second before a person consciously decides to make a voluntary movement.
from discovered in 1964 by german scientists hans helmut kornhuber and luder deecke, who recorded eeg signals from subjects flexing a finger and found the brain's motor cortex was quietly ramping up well before anyone felt like moving.
benjamin libet1983 experiments made it famous, and controversial
timing gapcan precede conscious urge by 350ms to 10 seconds
veto powerlibet argued you can still consciously block the act
origin sitebuilds in the supplementary motor area first
for instance
libet clock experiment — 1983 ucsf study, subjects watched a dot to time their urge to move
soon et al 2008 — max planck study decoded choices up to 10 seconds early via fmri
schurger 2012 model — reframed rp as neural noise crossing a threshold, not a decision