Free Wally: Where motor intentions meet reason and consequence

Readiness Potential Prevalence During a Deliberate Decision-Making Task

“…In similar recent studies conducted by Maoz et al and Verbaarschot et al, the researchers made a clear distinction between arbitrary and deliberate choices (Maoz, et al, 2019;Verbaarschot et al, 2019). This distinction served to separate the arbitrary choices found in previous Libet-type RP studies from deliberate decisions with real-world consequences.…”

“…In these artificial environments, participants had to act to free a digital avatar. Upon analysis, they also found the presence of the intention to act arose before the awareness of the intention to do so across both arbitrary and deliberate decision classes (Verbaarschot et al, 2019).…”

Prevalence of a Late Readiness Potential During a Deliberate Decision-Making Task

“…The authors suggest that their findings do not support a purely stochastic model of RP generation and that the RP is linked to voluntary actions. In yet another study, Verbaarschot et al (2019) found clear RPs during both deliberate and arbitrary actions when participants were asked to play one of two games with identical self-paced movements; one game required deliberate actions to progress while the other game only required arbitrary actions. In the end their findings contradict those of Moaz et.…”

“…It was originally identified by Kornhuber and Deecke (1965) and is revealed by averaging many trials (>30) of electroencephalography (EEG) data recorded during experimental tasks involving spontaneous self-initiated movement. It reliably precedes movement and is clearly distinguishable into two components; an early RP that can start up to 2 s before movement onset and a late RP that starts about 300 ms before movement (Verbaarschot et al, 2019;Shibasaki & Hallett, 2006). The early RP consists of a slow decrease in negative potential that is symmetrically distributed and maximal at the midline centroparietal cortex (Shibasaki & Hallett, 2006).…”

“…Both components are related to preparation/execution of voluntary movement and not associated with involuntary movement (barring the rare exceptional cases) (Shibasaki & Hallett, 2006). The early RP is visible in and precedes self-paced motor tasks, whereas the late RP has mainly been seen in choice reaction time tasks (Verbaarschot et al, 2019;Shibasaki & Hallett, 2006). Furthermore, it has been shown that the RP amplitude increases with intentional engagement (Kornhuber & Deecke, 1965).…”