Substance Abuse and Decision Making

When looking at substance abuse and its’ effects on decision-making, it is seemingly common for individuals to choose immediate reward regardless the severity of future consequences. Many studies including this one tend to focus on identifying which regions of the brain are stimulated and which neural circuitries are critical for complex decision-making tasks. As Professor Vukov discussed in his lecture and varying articles, one reason why the field of neuroscience has not disapproved free will yet is because free actions are complex. With that, I think it would be interesting to investigate how such complex decisions and resulting actions differ while an individual is under the influence of drugs. More specifically, focusing on how the concept of ‘decision before awareness’ might be altered in such circumstances. As Professor Vukov discussed, both experiments in 1983 and 2008 (as well as plenty other experiments), came to identical conclusions regarding the validity of free will and whether or not our actions are based on free will or are psychologically predisposed and determined. Through these motor-based tasks, it was concluded that actions (decisions) were decided before they became conscious and aware to the individual.

Firstly, it would be necessary to find a way through which these complex free actions could be analyzed in order for decision predictions to be more precise than the already sixty percent accuracy. And more importantly, it would be interesting to investigate how this concept of pre-awareness decision making might be affected in the presence of drugs. Would there still be a distinct interval between the initial onset (decision-making) and awareness stages? Would such vastly varying readiness potentials be generated? Would we still be able to predict actions 8-10 ms before being executed? As specific brain regions are often looked when investigating drug abuse, looking at potentials within the specific regions could further the debate on free will and the consciousness of decision-making. According to Catherine Brawn Fortier, neuropsychologist and researcher at the Harvard Medical School, and her colleagues, there is a reduction in cortical tissue within the frontal and temporal regions. These brain regions were obviously similar to those investigated during the fMRI scans in the experiments discussed in the free will experiments. Therefore, targeting areas and tissues affected by alcohol abuse and seeing whether the ready potentials differ amongst healthy individuals might be imperative in furthering our understanding of decision making with varying levels of self-control which more importantly leads to the debate on the validity of free will. As we are still in the debate on free will, establishing a foundational and universal definition and understanding is important and could lead to our understanding of more complex and abstract scenarios.

Work Cited:

Bode, Stefan, et al. “Tracking the Unconscious Generation of Free Decisions Using Ultra-High

Field fMRI.” PLOS Journal, 27 June 2011, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0021612#authcontrib.

Fortier, Catherine B, et al. “Reduced Cortical Thickness in Abstinent Alcoholics and Association

with Alcoholic Behavior.” Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, vol. 35, no. 12,

15 Sept. 2015, pp. 2193-2201. Wiley Online Library, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., d

oi:10.1111/j.1530-0277.2015.01576.x.

Siong Soon, Chun, et al. “Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain.”

Brief Communications, 13 Apr. 2008. Nature Neuroscience, Nature Publishing Group,

doi:10.1038/nn.2112.