Forum Moderators: phranque
Already several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain...brain activity predicts even up to 7 seconds ahead of time how a person is going to decide.
There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.
summary of the study from Max Planck Society
[mpg.de...]
Article in Nature (for you who have subscription to it)
[nature.com...]
But how can the results of the study help webmasters increase their clicks?