Patrick Haggard

Libet and “free will”: the intellectual history of an experiment

Patrick Haggard is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University College London, where he leads the Action & Body Research Group.

Research statement by Patrick Haggard:

I have two major research themes. The first is the cognitive neuroscience of voluntary action. Experiments in this theme attempt to link the subjective experience of intending and performing manual actions to the brain processes that occur before and after actual movement. The second research theme is the representation of one’s own body. How does the brain create and maintain a represention of one’s own body as a physical object? How is this representation influenced by current sensory inputs, such as touch and pain? How do such body representations contribute to a sense of self? These questions are addressed both in perceptual experiments, and in measures of brain activity elicited when subjects refer to a cognitive representation of the body.

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