Patrick Haggard
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Patrick Haggard is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. His research interests focus on the role of sensory and motor processes in human mental life. He uses the methods of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience to study the mechanisms that produce our basic bodily experiences, focusing on somatic sensation, and voluntary agency. He has held visiting fellowships in Paris and Berlin. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.
In June 2024, he joins the IAS for a one-month writing residency.
Research Interests
Bodily sensation, voluntary action, sense of agency
An intellectual history of the “Libet experiment”
Humans display a capacity for autonomous actions that far outstrips the capacities of other animals, and that underpins philosophical debates about ‘free will’. However, this volitional aspect of human action has proved hard to study scientifically. Forty years ago, Benjamin Libet published an experiment that has anchored investigations of human volition ever since. By combining voluntary actions, subjective time estimation, and recordings of brain activity, Libet argued that voluntary actions are caused by unconscious brain activity, rather than by any conscious intention to act. This project attempts an intellectual history of the Libet experiment, as a way of documenting, analysing and evaluating the challenges for a neuroscience of volition. Libet drew on 19th century notions of subjective chronometry that originated with Helmholtz and Wundt. The afterlife of the experiment has become embedded in philosophical debates over indeterminism, and recent notions of free will illusionism. Libet’s views on volition are linked to a “pathway view” of brain function. This view sees the distinctive feature of volition as its relation to the processes that cause bodily actions, and thus to responsibility for the outcomes of those actions. In contrast, most discussions of the Libet experiment take a “distributed network” view of the brain, and seek to explain the conscious experience of intention by integration across multiple cortical circuits.
Key publications
Haggard P. "The Neurocognitive Bases of Human Volition." Annu Rev Psychol. 2019 Jan 4;70:9-28. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103348. Epub 2018 Aug 20. PMID: 30125134.
Parés-Pujolràs E, Kim YW, Im CH, Haggard P. "Latent awareness: Early conscious access to motor preparation processes is linked to the readiness potential." Neuroimage. 2019 Nov 15;202:116140. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116140. Epub 2019 Aug 29. PMID: 31473350.
Fried I, Haggard P, He BJ, Schurger A. "Volition and Action in the Human Brain: Processes, Pathologies, and Reasons." J Neurosci. 2017 Nov 8;37(45):10842-10847. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2584-17.2017. PMID: 29118213; PMCID: PMC5678016.
 New session of the "Paris IAS Ideas" online talk series, with the participation of Patrick Haggard (University College London, UK / Paris IAS Fellow) |
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