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Have you ever gone ahead and eaten that piece of chocolate, despite
yourself?

Do you inadvertently make decisions because you are hungry or cold? In

other words, does the brain’s processing of internal bodily signals
interfere with your ability to act freely?

This line of thinking is at the heart of research that questions our ability
to act on thoughts of free will. We already know that inner body signals,
like the heartbeat, affect our mental states, can be used to reduce the
perception of pain and are of fundamental importance for bodily self-
consciousness.
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Thanks to a new discovery, it turns out that these inner body signals do
indeed affect acts of volition.

Scientists at EPFL in Switzerland have shown that you are more likely to
initiate a voluntary decision as you exhale. Published in today’s issue of
Nature Communications, these findings propose a new angle on an
almost 60-year-old neuroscientific debate about free will and the
involvement of the human brain.

“We show that voluntary action is indeed linked to your body’s inner
state, especially with breathing and expiration but not with some other
bodily signals, such as the heartbeat,” explains Olaf Blanke, EPFL’s
Foundation Bertarelli Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics and senior
author.

At the center of these results is the readiness potential (RP), a signal of

brain activity observed in the human cortex that appears not only before
voluntary muscle movement but also before one becomes aware of the
intention to move. The RP is the signature of voluntary action since it
consistently appears in brain activity measurements right before acts of
free will (like being aware that one wants to reach for the chocolate).

Interpretations of the RP have been debated for decades. Some interpret

the RP to show that free will is an illusion since the RP precedes the
conscious experience of free will. It seems to show that the brain
commits to a decision (chocolate) before we are even consciously aware
of having made that decision.

More recently, it was suggested that the RP could be an artifact of

measurement, potentially putting free will back into our command.
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But if we take on the view that our conscious decisions arise from a
cascade of firing neurons, then the origin of the RP may actually provide
insight into the mechanisms that lead to voluntary action and free will.
The way the brain’s neurons work together to come to a decision is still
poorly understood. [See hidden patterns of brain activity unveiled by
higher dimensional algebraic topology.] Our conscious experience of free
will, our ability to make decisions freely, may then be intricately wired to
the rest of our body.

The EPFL results suggest that the origin of the RP is linked to breathing,
providing a new perspective on experiences of free will: the regular cycle
of breathing is part of the mechanism that leads to conscious decision-
making and acts of free will. Moreover, we are more likely to initiate
voluntary movements as we exhale. (Did you reach for that piece of
chocolate during an exhale?)

These findings suggest that the breathing pattern may be used to predict
‘when’ people begin voluntary action. Your breathing patterns could also
be used to predict consumer behavior, like when you click on that button.
Medical devices that use brain-computer interfaces could be tuned and
improved according to breathing. The breathing-action coupling could be
used in research and diagnostic tools for patients with deficits in
voluntary action control, like obsessive compulsive disorders, Parkinson
disease, and Tourette syndromes. Blanke and Hyeong-Dong Park, first
author of this research, have filed a patent based on these findings.

Free will hijacked by interoceptive signals?

More generally, the EPFL findings suggest that acts of free will are
affected by signals from other systems of the body. Succumbing to that
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urge to eat chocolate may depend more on your body’s internal signals
than you may realize!

Blanke elaborates, “That voluntary action, an internally or self-generated

action, is coupled with an interoceptive signal, breathing, may be just one
example of how acts of free will are hostage to a host of inner body
states and the brain’s processing of these internal signals. Interestingly,
such signals have also been shown to be of relevance for self-
consciousness.”

You may be tempted to blame acts of chocolate binging on interoceptive

electrical signals hijacking your free will. The gut-mind connection is an
active field of research and interoceptive messages sent to the brain
certainly impact food cravings. For now, this latest EPFL research only
improves predictions of when you will indulge in that craving, and not
what you actually crave.

Acts of free will and inner states of the body

The prevailing view in neuroscience is that consciousness is an emergent

phenomenon of the brain. Firing of the brain’s neurons leads to
consciousness and the feeling of free will or voluntary action. By
belonging to the physical universe, the brain’s electrical activity within
the constraints of anatomy, is subject to the laws of physics. In this sense,
brain signals encoding the body, lungs and heart might naturally affect
the brain’s cognitive states too and therefore influence acts of free will.

To test whether the RP depends on the body’s inner state and the brain’s
representation thereof, Blanke and colleagues asked 52 subjects to press
a button at will at Campus Biotech in Geneva. EEGs monitored brain
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activity, a belt around the chest measured breathing activity and cardiac
activity was recorded.

The scientists found that the RP and voluntary action (pressing the
button) is linked to the body’s inner state – the regular breathing cycle –
but not to the heartbeat. Participants initiated voluntary movements
more frequently during an exhale than an inhale and were completely
unaware of this breathing-action coupling. The RP was also modulated
depending on the breathing cycle.

EPFL scientist and first author of the study Hyeong-Dong Park explains,
“The RP no longer corresponds only to cortical activity ‘unconsciously
preparing’ voluntary action. The RP, at least partly, reflects respiration-
related cortical processing that is coupled to voluntary action. More
generally, it further suggests that higher-level motor control, such as
voluntary action, is shaped or affected by the involuntary and cyclic
motor act of our internal body organs, in particular the lungs. Still the
precise neural activity that controls breathing remains to be mapped.”

The readiness potential and interpretations

Philosophers, psychologists, and more recently neuroscientists have long

debated our ability to act freely. The meaning of the readiness potential
(RP) has been questioned ever since its discovery by neuroscientists Hans
Helmut Kornhuber and Lüder Deecke in 1965, and later regarding its
relation to free will in neuroscientist Benjamin Libet’s experiments.

The entire brain consists of approximately 100 billion neurons, and each
individual neuron transmits electrical signals as the brain works.
Electrodes placed on the head can measure the collective electrical
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activity of the brain’s neurons, seen as wavy lines called an

electroencephalogram (EEG).

In 1965, neuroscientists Hans Helmut Kornhuber and Lüder Deecke

conducted a seminal experiment to test voluntary action and discovered
a recurring pattern of brain activity. They placed EEG electrodes on top of
the subject’s head, and asked the subject to press a button at will.
Kornhuber and Deecke discovered that the EEG consistently exhibited a
rising slope of wavy lines, the readiness potential, 1 second or more
before voluntary movement.
Source:
EPFL
Media Contacts:
Hillary Sanctuary – EPFL
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.

Original Research: Open access

“Breathing is coupled with voluntary action and the cortical readiness potential”. Hyeong-Dong Park, Coline Barnoud,
Henri Trang, Oliver A. Kannape, Karl Schaller & Olaf Blanke.
Nature Communications doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13967-9.

Abstract

Breathing is coupled with voluntary action and the cortical readiness potentials

Voluntary action is a fundamental element of self-consciousness. The readiness potential (RP), a slow drift of neural
activity preceding self-initiated movement, has been suggested to reflect neural processes underlying the preparation of
voluntary action; yet more than fifty years after its introduction, interpretation of the RP remains controversial. Based on
previous research showing that internal bodily signals affect sensory processing and ongoing neural activity, we here
investigated the potential role of interoceptive signals in voluntary action and the RP. We report that (1) participants
initiate voluntary actions more frequently during expiration, (2) this respiration-action coupling is absent during externally
triggered actions, and (3) the RP amplitude is modulated depending on the respiratory phase. Our findings demonstrate
that voluntary action is coupled with the respiratory system and further suggest that the RP is associated with fluctuations
of ongoing neural activity that are driven by the involuntary and cyclic motor act of breathing.

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