movement. Crucially, he also asked his volunteers to estimate when they experienced the ‘urge’ to make each movement: the precise moment of conscious intention, the crest of the breaking wave. They did this by noting the angular position of a rotating dot on an oscilloscope screen at the time they experienced the intention to move, and then reporting this position later on. The data were clear. After averaging across many trials, the readiness potential was identifiable hundreds of milliseconds before the conscious intention to move. In other words, by the time a person is aware of their
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