Bereitschaftspotential - Outcomes

Outcomes

The Bereitschaftspotential was received with great interest by the scientific community, as reflected by Sir John Eccles's comment: "There is a delightful parallel between these impressively simple experiments and the experiments of Galileo Galilei who investigated the laws of motion of the universe with metal balls on an inclined plane". The interest was even greater in psychology and philosophy because volition is traditionally associated with human freedom (cf. Kornhuber 1984). The spirit of the time, however, was hostile to freedom in those years; it was believed that freedom is an illusion. The tradition of behaviourism and Freudism was deterministic. While will and volition were frequently leading concepts in psychological research papers before and after the first world war and even during the second war, after the end of the second world war this declined, and by the mid-sixties these key words completely disappeared and were abolished in the thesaurus of the American Psychological Association. The BP is an electrical sign of participation of the supplementary motor area (SMA) prior to volitional movement, which starts activity prior to the primary motor area. The BP has preciptated a worldwide discussion about free will (cf. the closing chapter in the recent book "The Bereitschaftspotential").

EEGs and EMGs are used in combination with Bayesian inference to construct Bayesian networks which attempt to predict general patterns of Motor Intent Neuron Action Potentials firing. Researchers attempting to develop non-intrusive brain-machine interfaces are interested in this, as are system analysis, operations research, and epistemology (e.g. the Smith predictor has been suggested in the discussion). (explanation needed!)