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Oh yeah i remember this literature, its experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience of free will. Actually, a psychologist called Daniel Wegner has proved through extensive experimental research on normal individuals that the "will to act" is an illusion deriving from meta-cognitive processes that occur AFTER an individual's performed action/decision.
According to Wegner, the brain's fast unconscious computations evaluate the enviroment and produce an outcome which makes the individual to decide/act. At the same time, a simultaneous process associated with language and self-awareness produces the illusion that it was the individual's conscious awareness that made him/her act (whilst the act/decision itself was chosen without conscious awareness)and creates the illusion of "Apparent Causality" (that "I" performed the act/decision) resulting in the illusion of free will.
Also, a neuroscientist called Benjamin Libet had also used psycho-physiological apparatus such as Electro-Encephalography (EEG), Verbal response of presented stimulus and Electro-Myography (EMG), and proved that the EEG signal of the movement's preparation (evoked potential) comes FIRST, FOLLOWED by the Conscious awareness reflected on the verbal response, which in turn occurs before the EMG that detects the hand movement.
It seems now that they also used Brain Imaging to prove that...
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i can hear the birds chirping ...
