Science Neuroscience News

Free and Forced Decisions Share the Same Brain Evidence Path

A new Imaging Neuroscience study finds that voluntary and forced choices unfold through remarkably similar evidence-accumulation processes in the brain: neural signals ramp up before a decision, with faster ramps for quick choices and slower ramps for slower ones, suggesting our brains weigh internal preferences and goals in the same automatic way across decision types, challenging simple notions of free will.