In my last post I talked about the debate between the disease model and the choice model of addiction. I argued that you need to understand a bit about the brain in order to make sense of choice in the first place, and I reviewed some of the changes in the brain brought about by addiction — changes that make it more and more difficult to choose NOT to go after the thing (drugs, booze, Facebook, whatever) that you are addicted to. But now I want to go deeper into the issue of how we make choices. This seems so important to the topic of addiction, in general, and to the immediate question: how do you tell yourself NO?
A current article in NatureNews (a science publication for the general public) reviews some recent neuroscience experiments into the nature of free will. What is free will anyway? We generally assume that we make choices out of…well out of choice. We decide, we are the decider, we are the ones who choose what we do and what we don’t do. (In which case, addicts must be real idiots!) Yet neuroscience tells a different story. There are activation patterns in the brain that foreshadow what we are about to choose, seconds before we actually decide. In a new version of a classic experiment, Bode and colleagues (2011) asked participants to lie in an extremely powerful (fMRI, 7 Tesla) brain scanner. They were told to push a button on a joystick either on the left or the right, whenever they felt like it. Meanwhile, a stream of letters went by on a screen, changing every half-second. As soon as they pressed the button, recently displayed letters appeared in a new window. Now they were asked to select the letter they saw precisely when they had DECIDED whether to press the left or right button. The results? Activity in the left “frontopolar cortex” (at the very front of the prefrontal cortex) predicted what decision they were about to make, several seconds before they were aware of making the decision!
These results suggest that the moment of choice is not free at all. It is already determined by events in the brain. The debate between free will and “determinism” has gone on for years (in fact it started way back in the 18th century, with philosopher David Hume). But the science that shows us the nature of determinism has become more and more sophisticated. Now it is hard to refute the idea that choice is a moment in a stream of biological events. It is never entirely “free”.
Maybe this should not be surprising. After all, if our brains didn’t fall into a specific pattern before choosing whether to turn right or left, whether to have a cookie or an apple, whether to buy heroin or turn on the TV, then where would the decision come from? It has to come from our brain — from our very own brain, with all its cravings and preferences — or else where would it come from? It wouldn’t be ours if it didn’t come from our brain. And brains take time to do things. So it may not be so weird to think that changes in brain activity precede the moment when we are aware of making a choice.
If you follow that argument, then the difference between deliberate choice and addictive (compulsive) choice isn’t easy to pinpoint. In which case, what should we do about our tendency to make addictive choices? Just sit back, give up responsibility, and take the consequences? No, there’s a better answer! The closest thing to free choice, says emotion theorist Nico Frijda, is to insert moments of reflection into the stream of impulses going on behind the scenes. Our brains include the machinery to reflect, as well as the machinery to act impulsively, and brain changes preceding moments of choice can call upon both. If you relax, sit back for a moment, even meditate a bit, the short-term gains of addictive behaviour start to pale next to the long-term gains of getting and staying abstinent. Yes, it’s all happening in your brain before “you” make the choice, but you can guide your brain into activation patterns that are not ruled by habit and compulsion. And the more often you do it, the easier it gets.
There may not be such a thing as pure free will. But I like to think that choices are moments in a river of brain activity that can be altered by reflection and foresight. Or as William James said, “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”
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