Itzhak Fried

Neurons as Will and Representation

Most of our waking life we are suspended between memory and action, our experience of the past and our plans for the future. Yet, there is a puzzling asymmetry in our treatment of personal past and future as conscious free agents. While we readily accept our lack of freedom with respect to “free recall”, ascribing failing memory to various reasons and excuses, we are reluctant to give up our personal belief in “free will”. Yet these two, recall and will, are similar products of our neurons. They both involve internal generation of neuronal activity that at a certain instance in time emerges upon the platform of consciousness and becomes memory or will recognized by the self. I will describe how modern neuroscience provides us new abilities to access and analyze brain signals, and discuss how these challenge our views of personal freedom. The basic tenet put forward here is that the conscious experience of recollection and volition is an ultimate product of internal neuronal generators in the human brain. Critically, these generators operate initially at a preconscious level, highlighting the question of who is in control? To what extent then does neuroscience new discoveries bear upon the decoding, prediction and potential modulation and manipulation of human behavior, and what are then the personal and societal implications?

Publications majeures

Single Neuron Studies of the Human Brain: Probing Cognition, with U. Rutishauser, M. Cerf, G. Kreiman, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2014.

"Syndrome E", The Lancet, vol. 350, n° 9094, 1997.

"Brain Stimulation and Memory", Brain, n° 138, july 2015.

"Preconscious prediction of a driver's decision using intracranial recordings", with O. Perez, R. Mukamel, A. Tankus, J.D. Rosenblatt, Y. Yeshurun, Journal of Cognitive neuroscience, vol. 27, issue 8, August 2015.