2. Aaron Schurger: The readiness potential, auto-correlated noise, and the weather

Aaron is a cognitive neuroscientist, working on volition and consciousness. Aaron and I met in 2016 in Paris when I did my MSc thesis in his lab at Neurospin on decoding planned and spontaneous movements, using M/EEG. Aaron has since moved to California where he is Assistant Professor at Chapman University.

In this conversation, we talk about Aaron's work in trying to understand the readiness potential. We talk about the classic interpretation, Aaron's interpretation, and how Aaron's interpretation can be applied to non-movement contexts, including the stock market and meteorology.

Time stamps

0:00:40 We don't really know what the readiness potential is

0:01:52 The classic interpretation of the readiness potential

0:16:39 Aaron's interpretation of the readiness potential

0:31:04 The origin of Aaron's interpretation

0:42:33 Applying Aaron's model to non-movement contexts: the stock market and meteorology

0:54:40 - Aaron's plans for studying the readiness potential in the next few years: breathing, individual differences, anticipation

Links

Podcast links

• Website: https://bjks.buzzsprout.com/
•  Twitter: https://twitter.com/BjksPodcast

Aaron's links 

• Chapman profile: https://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/aaron-schurger
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=lBSjfagAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/schurgerlab

Ben's links: 

• Website: https://bjks.blog/
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=-nWNfvcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Papers mentioned

Fried, I., Mukamel, R., & Kreiman, G. (2011). Internally generated preactivation of single neurons in human medial frontal cortex predicts volition. Neuron

Kagaya, K., & Takahata, M. (2010). Readiness discharge for spontaneous initiation of walking in crayfish. Journal of Neuroscience

Kornhuber, H. H., & Deecke, L. (1965/2016). Hirnpotentialänderungen bei Willkürbewegungen und passiven Bewegungen des Menschen: Bereitschaftspotential und reafferente Potentiale/Brain potential changes in voluntary and passive movements in humans: readiness potential and reafferent potentials. Pflüger's Archiv

Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., & Pearl, D. K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity. Brain

Schotanus, P., & Schurger, A. (2020). Spontaneous Volatility: Fooled by Reflexive Randomness. Journal of Behavioral Finance

Schurger, A., Sitt, J. D., & Dehaene, S. (2012). An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Schurger, A., Mylopoulos, M., & Rosenthal, D. (2016). Neural antecedents of spontaneous voluntary movement: a new perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Schurger, A. (2018). Specific relationship between the shape of the readiness potential, subjective decision time, and waiting time predicted by an accumulator model with temporally autocorrelated input noise. Eneuro