Posted by desolationrower on July 10, 2011, at 21:31:21
Free Will, Freedom of Choice and Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration***
i'm actually only half way through. interested read if you like neuropsych and philosophy.
'free will' seems important to me since i feel personality-incongruent choices (i think there is some specific term from OCD literature that i can't recall) reduce feeling of control, and there is a lot o psych research on the importance of believing in one's ability to make decisions, internal locus of control, etc.
ABSTRACT
The question whether human beings have free will has been debated by philosophers and theologians for thousands of years. More recently, neuroscientists have applied novel concepts and tools in neuroscience to address this question. We submit that human beings do have free will and the physiological substrate for its exercise is contained within neural networks. We discuss the potential neurobiology of free will by exploring volitionally initiated motor activity and the behavioural-response to a stimulus-response paradigm. We also submit that the exercise of free will can be affected in patients with the certain neurological disorders such as the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia. Clinicopathological correlation in patients with this disorder provides an opportunity to further elucidate the neural substrate for this fundamental human attribute. We also discuss the clinical correlates of the loss of free will in this population, which is a source of significant distress to patients, significant others and care givers.
Keywords: Behavioural variant, Free will, Freedom of choice, Frontotemporal dementia, Volitional movement, Frontotemporal lobar degeneration, FTLD, BVFTLDFulltext: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115293/?tool=pubmed
Better living through chemistry, socialism, and big phallic rockets (with a side of roquette)
poster:desolationrower
thread:990723
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/neuro/20110604/msgs/990723.html