So we studied the brain process of free
will. So what's free will?
Take an example from dinner, whether you want
water, beer or wine,
or whether you want chocolate for dessert.
Compare this with involuntary actions like
trembling or other movements,
withdrawing the hand from a hot plate.
What we found, surprisingly, is that free will,
or voluntary action,
is dependent on a very cyclic,
inner activity related to breathing.
The ongoing activity of breathing strongly
modulates and predicts when
the subject is going to press the button.
So we used really simple
experimental setup.
The participants can press the button
whenever they want.
Fifty-three participants performed the task,
and we measured their heartbeat using an electrocardiogram, and their breathing
using the respiration belt, and their
brain activity using the EEG cap on the head.
We found that people begin their voluntary action,
or conscious mental decision
while breathing out, in particular,
at the end of a breathing cycle.
So it's like breathe in, breathe out,
and they perform voluntary action.
We wanted to combine our interest in interoception
on self-consciousness,
so the self, who you are, what decisions
you make,
with another essential component of self-consciousness, which is voluntary action or freewill.
As a basic research lab, the first
application for us is really to understand
the cognitive science, the psychology and the brain mechanisms involved, why and how
breathing is coupled with action. Only
certain actions, all actions and
what's in particular the synchronization,
what drives it.
There are several medical applications
of these findings, I believe, so one could be
that in obsessive-compulsive
disorders or Tourette syndrome, so
disorders of voluntary movement control,
we would understand the underlying science better,
neuroscience better, and also,
maybe can move towards diagnostic procedures.
As brain computer interfaces,
linking brain activity of movement-impaired
individuals with robotic or
computer devices.
So there again, our data shows certain periods in
time during these action and decision making
where the decoding of the users
or patients decision is much improved
compared to other more silent periods,
based on respiration.
