First-person approaches in neuroscience of consciousness: Brain dynamics correlate with the intention to act

Do meditators have higher awareness of their intentions to act?

“…Compared to the standard task, this specified instruction enabled us to study the role of introspecting voluntary movement initiation, and thus, to examine whether individuals are able to report the emergence times of intention in accordance with the brain processes. Furthermore, we have recently shown that an expert meditator was able to give reliable reports of his inner processes underlying volition, showing several correspondences between his subjective reports and the extent of the RP amplitudes recorded in parallel (Jo, Wittmann, Borghardt, et al, 2014). In support of this view, many studies have shown enhanced attentional control in experienced meditators or after meditation practice for meditation-naïve individuals (Chan & Woollacott, 2007;Lutz et al, 2009;MacLean et al, 2010).…”

“…This discrepancy could be explained by the fact that in the present study w-time was associated with the slope of the early RP rather than with the onset time of the RP, showing that individual meditators who reported earlier w-time values displayed steeper slopes. Recent studies have demonstrated that the onset and slope of the RP could reflect ongoing fluctuations of brain dynamics (Jo et al, 2013;Jo, Wittmann, Borghardt, et al, 2014;Schurger et al, 2012) and that the perceived time of the apparent sensory feedback is associated with the slope of the early RP . Therefore, it could be more fruitful to investigate the slope (the extent of the RP amplitude) rather than the onset time of the RP.…”

“…Whether to commit this intention can be determined by a final decision process. c o r t e x 6 5 ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 4 9 e1 5 8 intention to act even without immediate movement execution (Jo, Wittmann, Borghardt, et al, 2014;Vinding, Jensen, & Overgaard, 2014). Furthermore, voluntary actions that were following the subjective experience of intention resulted in higher RP amplitude as compared to the actions that were performed during the absence of intention experience (Jo, Wittmann, Borghardt, et al, 2014;Keller & Heckhausen, 1990).…”

“…An internal starting point for a movement could be an inner impulse or urge, which can be described as a pre-conceptual movement of the mind. Such an inner impulse may be possible to access with awareness as a certain "taste" of a mind movement, but it is unspecified and not conceptualized at first (Jo, Wittmann, Borghardt, Hinterberger, & Schmidt, 2014). This impulse may be occasionally so strong that it is hard to restrain from action execution (e.g., addictive behaviors or autonomic behaviors to avoid imminent danger to life).…”

“…c o r t e x 6 5 ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 4 9 e1 5 8 intention to act even without immediate movement execution (Jo, Wittmann, Borghardt, et al, 2014;Vinding, Jensen, & Overgaard, 2014). Furthermore, voluntary actions that were following the subjective experience of intention resulted in higher RP amplitude as compared to the actions that were performed during the absence of intention experience (Jo, Wittmann, Borghardt, et al, 2014;Keller & Heckhausen, 1990). In contrast, relative positive deflections of SCPs, which overall lead to smaller negative RP amplitudes, seem to be associated with a decision process to withhold an action (Misirlisoy & Haggard, 2013), suggesting the absence or a diminished degree of intention as compared to when relative negative deflections are recorded.…”