Despite the allegations of embarrassed sports stars and politicians, you and only you control your actions, right? In other words, it’s your free will that allows you to grab that cup of coffee and every time you take a sip, you recognize you’ve done so. Right?
Um, “yes” wouldn’t make a very good punch line, would it?
In fact, you can act without knowing it, you can think you’ve acted without actually doing so, and—this is the cool part—you can intend to act and think you’ve acted, without having moved at all.
Here’s how:
The parietal cortex bookends an action. It’s the home of intention and also evaluates an action’s effect (“Hand, pick up that coffee! Yes, the hand has complied with my order!”). But a premotor circuit is what actually makes our muscles twitch (“Duh, OK boss”). Researchers zapped the parietal to create the phantom sensation of movement—subjects intended to move and thought they’d done so, but hadn’t actually moved anything. Researchers then zapped premotor circuits—subjects moved without meaning to or knowing it.
Intention, Inaction, and Inebriation
In the coolest example of the placebo effect ever, researchers showed that intending to drink a beer and then believing you’ve done so can make you drunk, despite the sneaky substitution of a nonalcoholic beverage (in an experiment with obvious ethical and moral problems). On the other end of the health spectrum, it’s unclear whether really, honestly intending to go for a run and then believing you’ve done so returns similar gains as actually going for a run (I plan extensive testing).
This might just seem like a freaky little factoid, but if your intention is split from your actions, then who is driving the bus? Contemplate the death of free will. Ohmmmmm.