Haynes’s group brain-imaged subjects participating in a nonmotoric task, choosing whether to add or subtract one number from another; they found a neural signature of decision coming before conscious awareness, but coming from a different brain region than the SMA (called the posterior cingulate / precuneus cortex). So maybe the pick-your-charity scientists were just looking in the wrong part of the brain—simple brain regions decide things before you think you’ve consciously made a simple decision, more complicated regions before you think you’ve made a complicated choice.[18]
