Marcel Brass – The Neuroscience of Free Will

This is a very cool podcast from Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot. Your atheist host (Common Sense Atheism) Luke Muehlhauser interviews neuroscientist Marcel Brass on the brain science that defines free will.

CPBD 085: Marcel Brass – The Neuroscience of Free Will

by Luke Muehlhauser on January 16, 2011

(Listen to other episodes of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot here.)

Today I interview Marcel Brass, one of the leading researchers in the brain science of free will and intentional action.

Download CPBD episode 085 with Marcel Brass. Total time is 51:18.

Marcel Brass links:

• Marcel Brass at Ghent University

Links for things we discussed:

• fMRI
• Broca’s area
• positron emission tomography, transcranial magnetic stimulation, single-cell recording, electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography
• experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, neuroscience
• neuroscience of free will
• Benjamin Libet
• Bereitschaftspotential
• Matsuhashi & Hallett, “The timing of the conscious intention to move” (2008)
• Supplementary motor area (SMA)
• Banks & Isham, “We infer rather than perceive the moment we decided to act” (2009)
• Kuhn & Brass, “Retrospective construction of the judgment of free choice” (2009)
• Brass, “Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain” (2008)
• Two experiments showing a connection between fatalistic beliefs and propensity to cheat
• Saul Smilansky

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You can read the transcript at the site.

Tags: Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot, atheism, Luke Muehlhauser, interview, neuroscience, Marcel Brass, brain science, Psychology, Science, free will, Philosophy, brain, Neuroscience of Free Will, Common Sense Atheism