Mind-Brain Identity Theories: Minding the Time Gap

摘要

Saigle, Dubljevic, and Racine (2018) made a remarkable work, carefully pointing out the methodological limitations of a series of studies inspired by Libet’s paradigm and the risks of using their results for making assumptions about complex cognitive phenomena. Very briefly, Libet’s paradigm shows evidence that the decision of starting a movement, a mental phenomenon, is associated with a specific pattern of neuronal activity occurring milliseconds earlier. The fact that this neurophysiologic activity is detectable in parietal regions, and its response-locked characteristics, suggest that it is the expression of a final motor output of a decision process that occurred somewhere in the brain and communicated to premotor and motor areas for the preparation and execution of an action.