The Will and its Brain: An Appraisal of Reasoned Free Will

by Hans Helmut Kornhuber, Lüder Deecke

Overview

In 1964–1965, Hans Helmut Kornhuber and Lüder Deecke achieved a scientific breakthrough with the discovery of the Bereitschaftspotential (BP), or readiness potential. In The Will and its Brain, Kornhuber and Deecke present evidence that proves we can record activity from the human brain occurring prior to our volitional movements or actions. Such preparatory activity is generated by specific brain regions, particularly by the supplementary motor area (SMA) of the frontal lobe, which lies on the inner surface of the brain between the hemispheres. The primary (precentral) motor cortex (MI) later becomes activated in preparing for action. Consequently, the authors discriminate between two components of the preparatory activity of the Bereitschaftspotential: an early SMA-generated BP1 and a late MI-derived BP2. Between BP1 and BP2, the intentional activity runs over the so-called motor loop via the basal ganglia. Kornhuber and Deecke discuss these and other brain processing systems while focusing on the concept of free will. They claim that we, indeed, have free will. It may not be absolutely free, but free in terms of degrees. We can take efforts to increase our degrees of freedom through self-improvement, but we can also lose degrees of freedom through self-mismanagement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761858560
Publisher:	University Press of America
Publication date:	09/06/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	110
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Hans Helmut Kornhuber was born in 1928 in Königsberg, Germany, and passed away in 2009. He was a brilliant neurologist and neurophysiologist known worldwide. After his release in 1949 from a Russian prisoner of war camp, he studied medicine in Munich, Göttingen, Freiburg, Heidelberg, and Basel. He was trained in clinical neurophysiology at the Neurological University Hospital in Freiburg and became full professor of neurology at the University of Ulm, Germany in 1966.

Lüder Deecke was born in 1938 in Lohe, Germany. He studied medicine at the universities of Freiburg, Hamburg, and Vienna. He received his clinical education at the Neurological University Hospital in Freiburg and at the University of Ulm. Deecke became full professor of neurology and head of the Neurological University Hospital in Vienna in 1985. In 1990, he founded and subsequently chaired the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Functional Brain Topography.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Foreword
Preface
Preface to the German Edition
Introduction — What is the Will?
Chapter One: The Will — History and Transcultural Aspects
Chapter Two: The Will — Its Association with Freedom
Chapter Three: The Will and Psychiatry/Psychology
Chapter Four: The Will and Neurophysiology/Brain Research
Chapter Five: The Will and New Psychology Schools
Chapter Six: The Will and the Real Function of the Frontal Lobe — Commander, Delegator, Supervisor and Rater
Chapter Seven: The Will and the Evolution of Man — Creativeness and Cooperation — Common Will
Chapter Eight: The Will and Dream Sleep, Feelings, Drives, Meaning-Happiness, Beauty, Love, Empathy and Theory of Mind
Chapter Nine: The Will and the Limbic System, the Hypothalamus, the Arousal System, Circadian Rhythm, the Endocrine System, Fatigue and Impetus
Chapter Ten: The Will is Not Strictly Coupled with Consciousness — There are Conscious and Unconscious Agendas in the Brain and Both are Important
Chapter Eleven: The Will — Is it Grounded upon Freedom or upon Total Determinism?
Chapter Twelve: The Will — Its Freedom is Not a Priori Granted: We Have to do Something for It — Actively Increasing our Degrees of Freedom
Summary
Bibliography
Index
Name Index

What People are Saying About This

Daniel C. Dennett

. . . required reading for anybody interested in what neuroscience has to say about our capacity to make responsible decisions and be captains of our own destiny.

Editorial Reviews

.. . required reading for anybody interested in what neuroscience has to say about our capacity to make responsible decisions and be captains of our own destiny.

Daniel C. Dennett