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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on February 11, 2009
Cerebral Cortex 2009 19(10):2352-2360; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn252
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

When the Brain Changes Its Mind: Flexibility of Action Selection in Instructed and Free Choices

Stephen M. Fleming1, Rogier B. Mars1,2, Thomas E. Gladwin3,4 and Patrick Haggard1

1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2 Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, University College London, WC1N 3AR, UK, 3 Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, 3584 CG Utrecht, the Netherlands, 4 Department of Psychiatry, Stuivenberg Hospital, 2060 Antwerpen, Belgium

Address correspondence to Stephen M. Fleming, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. Email: s.fleming{at}fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk.

The neural mechanisms underlying the selection and initiation of voluntary actions in the absence of external instructions are poorly understood. These mechanisms are usually investigated using a paradigm where different movement choices are self-generated by a participant on each trial. These "free choices" are compared with "instructed choices," in which a stimulus informs subjects which action to make on each trial. Here, we introduce a novel paradigm to investigate these modes of action selection, by measuring brain processes evoked by an instruction to either reverse or maintain free and instructed choices in the period before a "go" signal. An unpredictable instruction to change a response plan had different effects on free and instructed choices. In instructed trials, change cues evoked a larger P300 than no-change cues, leading to a significant interaction of choice and change condition. Free-choice trials displayed a trend toward the opposite pattern. These results suggest a difference between updating of free and instructed action choices. We propose a theoretical framework for internally generated action in which representations of alternative actions remain available until a late stage in motor preparation. This framework emphasizes the high modifiability of voluntary action.

Key Words: action selection • event-related potential • motor preparation • voluntary action


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