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Benjamin Libet (pronounced /ˈlɪbət/^[1]) (April 12, 1916 - July 23, 2007) was a researcher in the physiology Physiology is the science of the functioning of living systems. It is a subcategory of biology. In physiology, the scientific method is applied to determine how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells and biomolecules carry out the chemical or physical function that they have in a living system. The word physiology is from Ancient Greek: φύσις department of the University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dental, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world. The UCSF Medical Center is consistently ranked among the top 10 hospitals in, and a pioneering scientist in the field of human consciousness Consciousness is variously defined as subjective experience, or awareness, or wakefulness, or the executive control system of the mind. It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety of mental phenomena. Although humans realize what everyday experiences are, consciousness refuses to be defined, philosophers note :. In 2003, he was the first recipient of the Virtual Nobel Prize in Psychology from the University of Klagenfurt The University of Klagenfurt was founded in 1970 in Klagenfurt, Austria. It began as a College of Educational Studies . Since October 2004 the official German name is Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt in order to stress the intercultural connections between the Alpine regions and the Adriatic Sea. (In English the university leaves out the, "for his pioneering achievements in the experimental investigation of consciousness, initiation of action, and free will".^[2] In his acceptance speech, Libet summarized his life's research and highlighted his work on conscious volitional acts and the antedating of sensory awareness.

In the 1970s, Libet was involved in research into neural The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous system of vertebrates contains the brain, spinal cord, activity and sensation thresholds Sensory threshold is a theoretical concept used in psychophysics. A stimulus that is less intense than the sensory threshold will not elicit any sensation. Methods have been developed to measure thresholds in any of the senses. His initial investigations involved determining how much activation at specific sites in the brain was required to trigger artificial somatic The term somatic refers to cells of the body, rather than gametes (eggs or sperm). In humans, somatic cells contain two copies of each chromosome (diploid), whereas gametes only contain one copy of each chromosome (haploid). Although all somatic cells contain identical DNA, after exposure to specific enzymes, they evolve a variety of tissue- sensations, relying on routine psychophysical procedures. This work soon crossed into an investigation into human consciousness; his most famous experiment demonstrates that the unconscious electrical processes in the brain called Bereitschaftspotential In neurology, the Bereitschaftspotential or BP , also called the pre-motor potential or readiness potential (RP), is a measure of activity in the motor cortex of the brain leading up to voluntary muscle movement. The BP is a manifestation of cortical contribution to the pre-motor planning of volitional movement. It was first recorded and reported (or readiness potential) discovered by Lüder Deecke Full Professor and Head, Department of Clinical Neurology at the University of Vienna Medical University of Vienna, professor emeritus since OCT 2006, Deecke is also head of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Functional Brain Topography[citation needed] and is the author of a number of books and more than 500 publications in the fields of and Hans Helmut Kornhuber in 1964 precede conscious decisions to perform volitional, spontaneous acts, implying that unconscious The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German philosophy romantic philosopher Sir Christopher Riegel and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The unconscious mind might be defined as that part of the mind which gives rise to a collection of mental phenomena that manifest in a person's neuronal processes precede and potentially cause volitional acts which are retrospectively felt to be consciously motivated by the subject. The experiment has caused controversy as it challenges the pre-scientific philosophical and religious views of "free will". It has also inspired further study.

Volitional acts and readiness potential

Equipment

To gauge the relation between unconscious readiness potential and subjective feelings of volition and action, Libet required an objective "[A]n objective account is one which attempts to capture the nature of the object studied in a way that does not depend on any features of the particular subject who studies it. An objective account is, in this sense, impartial, one which could ideally be accepted by any subject, because it does not draw on any assumptions, prejudices, or method of marking the subject's conscious experience of the will to perform an action in time, and afterward comparing this information with data recording the brain's electrical activity during the same interval.^[3][4] For this, Libet required specialized pieces of equipment.

The first of these was the cathode ray Cathode rays are streams of electrons observed in vacuum tubes, i.e. evacuated glass tubes that are equipped with at least two metal electrodes to which a voltage is applied, a cathode or negative electrode and an anode or positive electrode. They were discovered by German scientist Johann Hittorf in 1869 and in 1876 named by Eugen Goldstein oscilloscope An oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that allows signal voltages to be viewed, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences (vertical(Y) axis) plotted as a function of time or of some other voltage (horizontal(x) axis). Although an oscilloscope displays voltage on its vertical axis, any, an instrument typically used to graph the amplitude Amplitude is the magnitude of change in the oscillating variable with each oscillation within an oscillating system. For example, sound waves in air are oscillations in atmospheric pressure and their amplitudes are proportional to the change in pressure during one oscillation. If a variable undergoes regular oscillations, and a graph of the system and frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency. The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency. Loosely speaking, 1 year is the period of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, and the Earth's rotation on its axis has of electrical signals. With a few adjustments, however, the oscilloscope could be made to act as a timer: instead of displaying a series of waves, the output was a single dot that could be made to travel in a circular motion, similar to the movements of a second hand around a clock face. This timer was set so that the time it took for the dot to travel between intervals marked on the oscilloscope was approximately forty-three milliseconds. As the angular velocity of the dot remained constant, any change in distance could easily be converted into the time it took to travel that distance.

To monitor brain activity during the same period, Libet used an electroencephalogram Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons within the brain. In clinical contexts, EEG refers to the recording of the brain's spontaneous electrical activity over a short period of time, usually 20–40 minutes, as recorded from multiple electrodes placed on the scalp. In (EEG). The EEG uses small electrodes An electrode is an electrical conductor used to make contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit . The word was coined by the scientist Michael Faraday from the Greek words elektron (meaning amber, from which the word electricity is derived) and hodos, a way placed at various points on the scalp that measure neuronal activity in the cortex, the outermost portion of the brain, which is associated with higher cognition. The transmission of electrical signals across regions of the cortex causes differences in measured voltage across EEG electrodes. These differences in voltage reflect changes in neuronal activity in specific areas of the cortex.

To measure the actual time of the voluntary motor act, an electromyograph (EMG) recorded the muscle movement using electrodes on the skin over the activated muscle of the forearm. The EMG time was taken as the zero time relative to which all other times were calculated.

Methodology

Researchers carrying out Libet’s procedure would ask each participant to sit at a desk in front of the oscilloscope timer. They would affix the EEG electrodes to the participant’s scalp, and would then instruct the subject to carry out some small, simple motor activity, such as pressing a button, or flexing a finger or wrist, within a certain time frame. No limits were placed on the number of times the subject could perform the action within this period.

During the experiment, the subject would be asked to note the position of the dot on the oscilloscope timer when "he/she was first aware of the wish or urge to act" (control tests with Libet's equipment demonstrated a comfortable margin of error of only -50 milliseconds). Pressing the button also recorded the position of the dot on the oscillator, this time electronically. By comparing the marked time of the button's pushing and the subject's conscious decision to act, researchers were able to calculate the total time of the trial from the subject's initial volition through to the resultant action. On average, approximately two hundred milliseconds elapsed between the first appearance of conscious will to press the button and the act of pressing it. As of 2008, the upcoming outcome of a decision could be found in study of the brain activity in the prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 7 seconds before the subject was aware of their decision.^[5]

Researchers also analyzed EEG recordings for each trial with respect to the timing of the action. It was noted that brain activity involved in the initiation of the action, primarily centered in the secondary motor cortex, occurred, on average, approximately five hundred milliseconds before the trial ended with the pushing of the button. That is to say, researchers recorded mounting brain activity related to the resultant action as many as three hundred milliseconds before subjects reported the first awareness of conscious will to act. In other words, apparently conscious decisions to act were preceded by an unconscious buildup of electrical charge within the brain - this buildup came to be called Bereitschaftspotential or readiness potential.

Implications of Libet's experiments

Libet's experiments suggest that unconscious processes in the brain are the true initiator of volitional acts, and free will therefore plays no part in their initiation. If the brain has already taken steps to initiate an action before we are aware of any desire to perform it, the causal role of consciousness in volition is all but eliminated.

Libet finds that conscious volition is exercised in the form of 'the power of veto' (sometimes called free won't); the idea that conscious acquiescence is required to allow the unconscious buildup of the readiness potential to be actualized as a movement. While consciousness plays no part in the instigation of volitional acts, Libet suggested that it may still have a part to play in suppressing or withholding certain acts instigated by the unconscious. Libet noted that everyone has experienced the withholding from performing an unconscious urge. Since the subjective experience of the conscious will to act preceded the action by only 200 milliseconds, this leaves consciousness only 100-150 milliseconds to veto an action (this is because the final 50 milliseconds prior to an act are occupied by the activation of the spinal motor neurones by the primary motor cortex, and the margin of error indicated by tests utilizing the oscillator must also be considered).

Susan Blackmore's common sense interpretation is "that conscious experience takes some time to build up and is much too slow to be responsible for making things happen."^[6]

Libet's experiments have received support from other research related to the Neuroscience of free will.

Objections of dualist philosophers

It has been suggested that consciousness is merely a side-effect of neuronal functions, an epiphenomenon of brain states. Libet's experiments are proffered in support of this theory; our reports of conscious instigation of our own acts are, in this view, a mistake of retrospection. However, some dualist philosophers have disputed this conclusion:

"in short, the [neuronal] causes and correlates of conscious experience should not be confused with their ontology [...] the only evidence about what conscious experiences are like comes from first-person sources, which consistently suggest consciousness to be something other than or additional to neuronal activity."^[7]

A simple rejoinder to the interpretation in terms of free will relies on response time: Libet asked his subjects to note the position of the dot the moment at which they became aware of making a decision. But perhaps there is a lag time between the actual decision and the subject's noting of the position of the dot. Another essential methodological objection is that merely noting the position of the dot may require mental activity that might interfere with the decision to move the wrist for a few tenths of a second.

A more general criticism from a dualist-interactionist perspective has been raised by Alexander Batthyany^[8] who points out that Libet asked his subjects to merely "let the urge [to move] appear on its own at any time without any pre-planning or concentration on when to act"^[9]. According to Batthyany, neither reductionist nor non-reductionist agency theories claim that urges which appear on their own are suitable examples of (allegedly) consciously caused events because one cannot passively wait for an urge to occur while at the same time being the one who is consciously bringing it about. Libet's results thus cannot be interpreted to provide empirical evidence in favour of agency reductionism, since non-reductionist theories, even including dualist interactionism, would predict the very same experimental results.

Subjective backward referral or "antedating" of sensory experience

It is worth noting that his early theory, resting on study of stimuli and sensation,^[10] was found bizarre by some commentators, including Patricia Churchland,^[11] due to the apparent idea of backward causation. Libet^[12] argued that data suggested that we retrospectively "antedate" the beginning of a sensation to the moment of the primary neuronal response. People interpreted Libet's work on stimulus and sensation in a number of different ways. John Eccles^[13] presented Libet's work as suggesting a backward step in time made by a non-physical mind. Edoardo Bisiach (1988)^[14] described Eccles as tendentious, but commented:

"This is indeed the conclusion that the authors (Libet, et al.) themselves seem to be willing to force upon the reader. [...] They dispute an alternative explanation, suggested by Mackay in a discussion with Libet (1979, p. 219)^[10] to the effect that 'the subjective referral backwards in time may be due to an illusory judgment made by the subject when he reports the timings', and more significant, Libet, et al. (1979, p. 220)^[10] hint at 'serious though not insurmountable difficulties' for the identity theory (of mind and matter) caused by their data."

Libet later concluded^[15] that there appeared to be no neural mechanism that could be viewed as directly mediating or accounting for the subjective sensory referrals backward in time [emphasis Libet's]. Libet postulated that the primary evoked potential (EP) serves as a "time marker". The EP is a sharp positive potential appearing in the appropriate sensory region of the brain about 25 milliseconds after a skin stimulus. Libet's experiments demonstrated that there is an automatic subjective referral of the conscious experience backwards in time to this time marker.^[10] The skin sensation does not enter our conscious awareness until about 500 milliseconds after the skin stimulus, but we subjectively feel that the sensation occurred at the time of the stimulus.

For Libet, these subjective referrals would appear to be purely a mental function with no corresponding neural basis in the brain. Indeed this suggestion can be more broadly generalized:

"The transformation from neuronal patterns to a subjective representation would appear to develop in a mental sphere that has emerged from that neuronal pattern. [...] My view of mental subjective function is that it is an emergent property of appropriate brain functions. The conscious mental cannot exist without the brain processes that give rise to it. However, having emerged from brain activities as a unique 'property' of that physical system, the mental can exhibit phenomena not evident in the neural brain that produced it."^[16]

Conscious Mental Field Theory

In the later part of his career, Libet proposed a theory of the conscious mental field (CMF)^[17] to explain how the mental arises from the physical brain. The two main motivations prompting this proposal were: (1) the phenomenon of the unity of subjective conscious experience and (2) the phenomenon that conscious mental function appears to influence nerve cell activity.

Regarding the unity of conscious experience, it was increasingly evident to Libet that many functions of the cortex are localized, even to a microscopic level in a region of the brain, and yet the conscious experiences related to these areas are integrated and unified. We do not experience an infinite array of individual events but rather a unitary integrated consciousness, for example, with no gaps in spatial and colored images. For Libet, some unifying process or phenomenon likely mediates the transformation of localized, particularized neuronal representations into our unified conscious experience. This process seemed to be best accountable in a mental sphere that appears to emerge from the neural events, namely, the conscious mental field.

The CMF is the mediator between the physical activities of nerve cells and the emergence of subjective experience. Thus the CMF is the entity in which unified subjective experience is present and provides the causal ability to affect or alter some neuronal functions. Libet proposed the CMF as a "property" of an emergent phenomenon of the brain; it does not exist without the brain but emerges from the appropriate system of neural activity. This proposal is related to electromagnetic theories of consciousness.

To test the proposed causal ability of the CMF to affect or alter neuronal functions, Libet proposed an experimental design,^[18] which would surgically isolate a slab of cerebral cortex (in a patient for whom such a procedure was therapeutically required). If electrical stimulation of the isolated cortex can elicit an introspective report by the subject, the CMF must be able to activate appropriate cerebral areas in order to produce the verbal report. This result would demonstrate directly that a conscious mental field could affect neuronal functions in a way that would account for the activity of the conscious will.

Tributes

Dr. Robert W. Doty, professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Rochester:^[19]

Dr. Susan J. Blackmore, visiting lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol:^[20]

References

1. ^ "2003 Virtual Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech". cognition.uni-klu.ac.at. http://cognition.uni-klu.ac.at/nobel/Ben_Libet_low_res.mov. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
2. ^ Virtual Nobel Prize web site. This prize has no relation to the Nobel Prize of the Swedish Nobel Foundation.
3. ^ Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., and Pearl, D. K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain, 106:623-642.
4. ^ Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8:529-566.
5. ^ Keim, Brandon (April 13, 2008). "Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them". Wired News (CondéNet). http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision. Retrieved 2008-04-13. and Chun Siong Soon, Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, John-Dylan Haynes (April 13, 2008). "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain (Abstract)". Nature Neuroscience (Nature Publishing Group) 11: 543. doi:10.1038/nn.2112. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn.2112.html. Retrieved 2008-04-13.
6. ^ [1]
7. ^ Velmans, Max (2000). Understanding Consciousness. London: Routledge. pp. 35–37. ISBN 0-41522-492-6.
8. ^ Batthyany, Alexander: Mental Causation and Free Will after Libet and Soon: Reclaiming Conscious Agency. In Batthyany und Avshalom Elitzur. Irreducibly Conscious. Selected Papers on Consciousness, Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg 2009, p.135ff.
9. ^ Libet, B.; Wright, E. W.; Gleason, C. A.. "Readiness potentials preceding unrestricted spontaneous pre-planned voluntary acts", 1983, Electroencephalographic and Clinical Neurophysiology 54: 322–325.
10. ^ ^{a b c d} Libet, B., Wright, E. W., Feinstein, B., and Pearl, D. (1979). Subjective referral of the timing for a conscious sensory experience: A functional role for the somatosensory specific projection system in man. Brain, 102(1):193-224.
11. ^ Churchland, P. S. (1981). On the alleged backwards referral of experiences and its relevance to the mind-body problem. Philosophy of Science, 48:165-181.
12. ^ Libet, B. (1981). The experimental evidence for subjective referral of a sensory experience backwards in time: Reply to P. S. Churchland. Philosophy of Science, 48:181-197.
13. ^ Eccles, J.C. (1985). Mental summation: The timing of voluntary intentions by cortical activity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8:542-543.
14. ^ Bisiach, E. (1988). The (haunted) brain and consciousness. In (A. Marcel and E. Bisiach, eds) Consciousness in Contemporary Science. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19852-237-1.
15. ^ Libet, B. (2004). Mind time: The temporal factor in consciousness, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-67401-320-4.
16. ^ Libet, B. (2004). op. cit. pp. 86-87.
17. ^ Libet, B. (2004). op. cit., pp. 157-184.
18. ^ Libet, B. (2004). op. cit., pp. 172-179.
19. ^ Perlman, D. (2007). "Benjamin Libet - neurophysiologist studied the nature of free will", The San Francisco Chronicle, August 18, 2007. Obituary
20. ^ Blackmore, S. (2007). "Mind over matter? Many philosophers and scientists have argued that free will is an illusion. Unlike all of them, Benjamin Libet found a way to test it.", commentary at Guardian Unlimited, August 28, 2007. Commentary.

Further reading

• Benjamin Libet, Anthony Freeman, and J. K. B. Sutherland, Editors, The volitional brain: Towards a neuroscience of free will. Imprint Academic, 1999. ISBN 0-907845-50-9.
• Benjamin Libet, Mind time: The temporal factor in consciousness, Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience. Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01320-4.
• Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves. Allen Lane, 2003. ISBN 0-14028-389-7.
• Michael Pauen (2004). Does Free Will Arise Freely?, Scientific American Mind, 14(1).

External links

• Obituary from The Los Angeles Times, August 27, 2007.
• Obituary from The San Francisco Chronicle, August 18, 2007.
• Obituary from The Davis Enterprise, July 27, 2007.
• Virtual Nobel Prize in Psychology Including video of Libet's acceptance speech.
• Short account of Libet's experiments and theory

See also

• Neuroscience of free will

Categories: 1916 births | 2007 deaths | University of California, San Francisco faculty | Consciousness researchers and theorists

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