The ability of adult, healthy humans to make free decisions is one of the pillars of our social order. It is therefore not surprising that this notion of volition, or free will, and the dependent idea of moral responsibility, have been pondered by philosophers, theologians, and other scholars for millennia. More recently, neuroscientists have joined in and begun to investigate and elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying decisions leading to voluntary action. This talk will focus on the decision-making processes that lead up to voluntary action and on the role of consciousness in such processes. In particular, Dr. Maoz will discuss online, real-time analysis, such as using people's brain activity to predict their future actions and beat them at games like "rock, paper, scissors".
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Dr. Uri Maoz earned his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is now a visiting researcher at Caltech and Assistant Adjunct Professor in the UCLA Psychology Department. His research interests include the role of consciousness in decision making and voluntary action, the laws that govern voluntary action, and societal influences of neuroscience.
Dr. Maoz has taught Psych 124C (Human Memory) and currently teaches Psych 20 (Matlab programming).
For more info, check out his website, or meet him this Wednesday!
https://sites.google.com/site/drurimaoz/home