ReviewProceedings. Biological sciences2011
Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates.
Review in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers.
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Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed.
- Graph theoretical analysis of brain connectivity in phantom sound perception.Scientific reports · 2016Trial
- Developmental Changes in Nest Egression Behavior and Its Relation to Novel Food Availability.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- The exploration of consciousness in insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- A sensory investment syndrome hypothesis: personality and predictability are linked to sensory capacity in the hermit crabProceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Symbolic Activity and Agency.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2025Review
- Desert ants (Melophorus bagoti) oscillate and scan more in navigation when the visual scene changes.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Free Will as Defined by the Constrained Disorder Principle: a Restricted, Mandatory, Personalized, Regulated Process for Decision-Making.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2024Review
- The place of Free Will: the freedom of the prisoner.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2024Review
- A systematic approach to brain dynamics: cognitive evolution theory of consciousness.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2023Article
- From the origins to the stream of consciousness and its neural correlates.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2022Article
- Collective action or individual choice: Spontaneity and individuality contribute to decision-making in Drosophila.PloS one · 2021Article
- Choice Hygiene for "Consumer Neuroscientists"? Ethical Considerations and Proposals for Future Endeavours.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Review
- Computational animal welfare: towards cognitive architecture models of animal sentience, emotion and wellbeing.Royal Society open science · 2020Review
- Intra-Individual Behavioural Variability: A Trait under Genetic Control.International journal of molecular sciences · 2020Article
- Functional advantages of Lévy walks emerging near a critical point.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Post-contact immobility and half-lives that save lives.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Insights from the study of complex systems for the ecology and evolution of animal populations.Current zoology · 2020Article
- Maternal diet affects juvenile Carpetan rock lizard performance and personality.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Optimal foraging and the information theory of gambling.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
- Neurocognitive free will.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
Until the advent of modern neuroscience, free will used to be a theological and a metaphysical concept, debated with little reference to brain function. Today, with ever increasing understanding of neurons, circuits and cognition, this concept has become outdated and any metaphysical account of free will is rightfully rejected. The consequence is not, however, that we become mindless automata responding predictably to external stimuli. On the contrary, accumulating evidence also from brains much smaller than ours points towards a general organization of brain function that incorporates flexible decision-making on the basis of complex computations negotiating internal and external processing. The adaptive value of such an organization consists of being unpredictable for competitors, prey or predators, as well as being able to explore the hidden resource deterministic automats would never find. At the same time, this organization allows all animals to respond efficiently with tried-and-tested behaviours to predictable and reliable stimuli. As has been the case so many times in the history of neuroscience, invertebrate model systems are spearheading these research efforts. This comparatively recent evidence indicates that one common ability of most if not all brains is to choose among different behavioural options even in the absence of differences in the environment and perform genuinely novel acts. Therefore, it seems a reasonable effort for any neurobiologist to join and support a rather illustrious list of scholars who are trying to wrestle the term 'free will' from its metaphysical ancestry. The goal is to arrive at a scientific concept of free will, starting from these recently discovered processes with a strong emphasis on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying them.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.