Benjamin Libet conducted research in 1983 to investigate the possibility of determining whether or not humans

had free will. According to his results, he discovered a surge in brain activity that precedes a voluntary action
and is referred to as the readiness potential. This surge occurred around 350 milliseconds before his volunteers
were cognitively aware of their intents to act on anything. According to what he said, the readiness potential is
the notion that causes the brain to start getting ready for the action. Libet also indicated that it is not only the
neurological activity that has the control, but that the 200-millisecond gap between conscious awareness of the
perpetrator's intention and the initiation of the act lets the perpetrator exercise free will, where he or she can
decide for or against the thought of the action. In other words, the gap between conscious awareness of the
perpetrator's intention and the initiation of the act gives the perpetrator the ability to decide for or against the
thought of the action.

However, Emilie Caspar and Axel Cleeremans of the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in Belgium chose to
investigate whether or not persons who are impulsive suffer from a lack of free will. They discovered that
certain individuals had a shorter time gap between their actions. Caspar thinks that this might imply that
impulsive people have less time to inhibit or control their activities. "It could indicate that maybe impulsive
persons have less time to," According to Aaron Schurger, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Lausanne, readiness potential is not the signal that the brain is getting ready to take action; rather,
it is "a signature of random neural noise that accumulates and then crosses a threshold, making movement
possible" (Ananthaswamy). According to another finding of Schurger's research, "impulsive persons have less
time to'veto' their actions since the choice to act comes considerably closer in time to the action itself"
(Schurger).