GEN-ERIC News

Why is it important to know what brain systems underlie self control? Many neuropsychiatric disorders, from substance dependence to personality disorders to attention deficit disorder, involve impairments of self control. Basic research such as this study may eventually lead to a better understanding of the systems responsible for these disorders, as well as for differences in people’s ability to control our less constructive impulses, such as the urge to say or do something ugly. As Brass and Haggard put it in their introduction, “[The] decision whether to act often has critical consequences. For example, there is a clear distinction between intending to hit someone and actually hitting them.” The research also touches on the age-old problem of free will. If physical processes in the brain cause our actions, then how can there be free will? How can we be held responsible for our behavior? Can’t we just all plead “my brain made me do it"? Brass and Haggard’s results do not solve this puzzle, but they do reveal some important new features of the puzzle. Their results illuminate a very important aspect of the brain’s control of behavior – the ability to hold off doing something after you’ve developed the intention to do it , which one might call “free won’t” as opposed to free will. From the broader perspective of reconciling our identity as free moral agents with our identity as physical brains, this discovery of an area apparently associated with “free won’t” makes the “brain” side of the equation a little more interesting and nuanced. Our brains don’t just “make us do it"; they also have specialized systems for stopping us from doing it.