Michael Graziano’s Attention Schema Theory of consciousness (AST) provides an interesting perspective on this study. Although the study is limited and predictin

Michael Graziano’s Attention Schema Theory of consciousness (AST) provides an interesting perspective on this study. Although the study is limited and predicting a decision only implies a correlation rather than a causation, it is worth thinking about how brain activity and conscious action are related. AST distinguishes between neuronal activity (attention) versus conscious experience (awareness), and postulates that awareness is both a model of attention and a director of attention. Essentially, consciousness as a simulation that has the startling ability to influence the simulator itself. Example: we experience seeing an apple (awareness) and consciously focus upon it, which amplifies the neuronal activity for sensing and processing vision (attention). Due to this amplification, we then gain a sharper experience of noticing more details about the apple. Awareness both models attention and directs it. In terms of predicting decisions based on brain scanning, it would be easy to see how as a person’s awareness focuses attention on a particular image, even without quite realizing it, that the brain patterns of such attention would be clearly amplified. This study seems to suggest that our conscious feeling of making a decision is a false experience. That we are simply watching a pre-ordained movie and are being given a false sense of agency. In AST, even though our consciousness is a synthesized model of our brain activity, and even though decisions may be made in neurons not part of that modeling, there is little meaningful difference between the model we experience of making a decision and the brain activity of the decision itself. Although there will always be a lag between a model of activity and the activity itself, we generally experience no lag. it would be interesting to see in what edge-cases lag would really matter. I believe there are some odd experiments with buttons and blinking lights where the decision to press a button is experienced after the experience of seeing the light from pressing the button. All the same, if AST is on target, then conscious agency is real, and this paper doesn’t have anything to say on the matter, even if the headline is highly suggestive that it does.