[Vikingod]

Source: Reuters
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A tiny fruit fly -- without any input from the outside world -- will spontaneously change directions, researchers said on Monday in a finding that just may rescue the notion that free will not only exists but is a basic function of the brain.

"Neuroscientists have been claiming free will doesn't exist," said Bjorn Brembs, a neurobiologist of the Free University Berlin in Germany who led the study.

The claim is based on work in the 1980s by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet of University of California San Francisco, who discovered that even before a person made a conscious decision to move, the brain had already started the process of movement.

Neuroscientists say this so-called "readiness potential" suggests that the brain simply responds to outside stimuli, and consciousness is just the brain's way of rationalizing actions the brain has already determined to take.

[Vikingod]

Pretty interesting stuff (at least to the science types around here).