NEWS:Defending free will: A fruit fly makes choices

[Guest guest]

|| Om Gurave Namah ||Dear Jyotishas, Here is an interesting article based on some scientific study. The last lines in the article makes an interesting statement. In existence of " Randomness or Pure Determinism " indicates Free-Will.

If everything was random, then that would indicate that there is no concious decision making AND also, If there was pure determinism, Like when you throw a stone, you can exactly calculate where the stone will fall, Indicates that the stone is not making decision.

Just some food for thought.Warm Regards.Sanjay P http://news./s/nm/20070516/sc_nm/flies_freewill_dc_1;_ylt=Ap.izVR9LhCQsxPW6XEe62QH1vAI

 

Defending free will: A fruit fly makes choices

 

 

By Julie Steenhuysen

 

Tue May 15, 8:07 PM ET

 

 

 

CHICAGO (Reuters) - 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.

" There are many prominent people who claim the main

function of the brain is to compute input to output, " Brembs

said in a telephone interview.

COMPLEX ROBOTS

But what if there was no input, Brembs wondered.

He and colleagues devised an experiment with fruit flies in

which they were deprived of all external stimuli.

Animals, and particularly insects, are often seen as

complex robots, responding only to external stimuli, said

Brembs, whose work appears in the Public Library of Science

journal PLoS One.

The researchers placed a single fruit fly in a pure white

chamber -- devoid of visual cues. The fly was fixed in place

and its attempts to turn were recorded. Researchers repeated

their experiment on many flies and analyzed the data using a

series of complex mathematical models.

What they found was surprising.

Lacking external input, Brembs said he had expected a

pattern of entirely random movement or noise -- akin to static

on a radio that is tuned between stations. Instead, the flies

showed a pattern of flight that was generated spontaneously by

the brain and could not have been random.

" The decision for the fly to turn left or turn right, which

it changes all the time, has to come from the design of the

brain, " Brembs said.

Brembs said the finding reveals a mechanism that could form

the biological basis of free will.

" I don't think we've found consciousness in the fruit fly, "

he said. " It's like one of the first building blocks, without

which you can't go on. "

George Sugihara, a mathematical biologist at the Scripps

Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San

Diego who helped with the data analysis, said the pattern of

variability shown by the fly's choices revealed a non-linear

signature -- something typical of many biological processes.

" We show free will 'can' exist, but we do not 'prove' it

does, " Sugihara said.

" Our results eliminate two alternative explanations of this

spontaneous turning behavior that would run counter to free

will, namely randomness and pure determinism, " he said in an

e-mail.

 

He said the results address the middle ground between

simple determinism -- the brain as an input-output machine --

and utterly random behavior.

 

" We speculate that if free will exists, it is in this

middle ground, " he said.