Unconscious mind

Control (management)

Cognitive psychology

Psychoanalysis

Neuroscience

Prefrontal cortex

Cortex (anatomy)

Cognition

Computer science

Psychology

Brain activity and meditation

Artificial intelligence

Electroencephalography

Human brain

Posterior parietal cortex

Nature Neuroscience

There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain