If you are a goalkeeper during a free kick, you have little time to decide to jump left or right to stop the ball. Though it feels like you make the decision first - before you start controlling your body - research shows that while you are deciding between the alternatives, some information is already sent to your body so it can prepare for the most likely outcome. In my thesis, I investigated this phenomenon by looking at brain and muscle activity while people were making a decision about visual stimuli. I showed that the communication between the brain and the muscles changes over the course of a decision, and that this depends on the difficulty of the decision. I also showed that when somebody changes their mind after they start acting on their initial decision, this is accompanied by less preparation in the muscles. Lastly, I looked at the effect of arousal and showed that the preparation for the best response option is increased when people are in a fearful situation. Overall, my thesis shows that preparing to act during a decision is impacted by both the available sensory information, and the internal state of the decision maker.
Yvonne is a cognitive neuroscientist with a bachelor's in Psychobiology from the University of Amsterdam and a research master's in cognitive neuroscience from Radboud University. She is interested in fundamental processes of perception, decision making and motor control. She completed a PhD project on continuous flow in decision-making at the sensorimotor lab of the Donders Institute, and is currently working as a postdoc at the Desender lab at KULeuven.