Doughnuts and decision making

The next time you find yourself in line at the bakery, you’ll find your brain has already been quietly gathering evidence toward your baked good of choice, and that choice happens a little faster than you realise.

In defence of free will

The latest book by Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky – Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will – has garnered a lot of media attention for its radical contention that we’re biological robots devoid of moral responsibility for what we do, fortunately he’s also entirely wrong.

Freedom and responsibility

Free will – our capacity to independently choose between different action – is crucial to our understanding of moral responsibility and criminal culpability, but new insights in neuroscience may undermine our faith in our own decision making.