Goalkeeper or corner? Neuroscientists show how the brain enables flexible decisions

Our brain is remarkably flexible in producing different reactions to supposedly comparable situations. The same sensory information can lead to different decisions depending on the behavioral context. One example of this is a penalty kick in soccer: a player can either choose the empty corner of the goal as the target or aim directly at the goalkeeper in the hope that he will jump aside. Both decisions are based on the same perception of the goalkeeper’s position, but lead to completely different actions.