Two recent neuroscience articles in important journals claim to undermine free will and “human exceptionalism”.

In the journal Science Dutch researchers claim that an overview of the literature shows that conscious decisions are deeply affected by the “unconscious will”.

"People often act in order to realize desired outcomes, and they assume that consciousness drives that behavior. But the field now challenges the idea that there is only a conscious will. Our actions are very often initiated even though we are unaware of what we are seeking or why," says Ruud Custers, of Utrecht University.

Custers told Time magazine that our conscious selves not really in charge, but that this is not necessarily a problem. "We have to trust that our unconscious sense of what we want and what is good for us is strong, and will lead us largely in the right direction."

In a similar vein, a study in the Journal of Neuroscience claims that brain scans can predict behaviour better than the people whose brains were scanned. Scientists at UCLA were able to predict whether subjects would use suntan lotion more accurately than the people themselves.

This could be a major finding for advertisers. While advertising agencies often use focus groups to test commercials and movie trailers, in the future they and public health officials perhaps should add "neural focus groups" to test which messages will be effective while monitoring the brain activity of their subjects. “We're just at the beginning,” says Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor. ~ Science Daily, June 23; Time, July 2