No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Experiencing Oneself vs Another Person as Being the Cause of an Action: The Neural Correlates of the Experience of Agency
Abstract
The present study is aimed at identifying the neural correlates of two kinds of attribution: experiencing oneself as the cause of an action (the sense of agency) or experiencing another person as being the cause of that action. The experimental conditions were chosen so that they differed only in their requirement to attribute an action to another person or to oneself. The same motor task and the same visual stimuli were used in the experimental conditions. Subjects used a joystick to drive a circle along a T-shaped path. They were told that the circle would be driven either by themselves or by the experimenter. In the former case subjects were requested to drive the circle, to be aware that they drove the circle, and thus to mentally attribute the action seen on the screen to themselves. In the latter case they were also requested to perform the task, but they were aware that action seen on the screen was driven by the experimenter. In accord with previous studies, the results showed that being aware of causing an action was associated with activation in the anterior insula, whereas being aware of not causing the action and attributing it to another person was associated with activation in the inferior parietal cortex. These two regions are involved in the perception of complex representations of the self and of its interactions with the external world. We suggest that the anterior insula is concerned with the integration of all the concordant multimodal sensory signals associated with voluntary movements. The inferior parietal cortex, in contrast, represents movements in an allocentric coding system that can be applied to the actions of others as well as the self.
... Furthermore, repeated induction of OBEs was achieved by focal electrical stimulation of the TPJ in a patient who was undergoing evaluation for epilepsy treatment (Blanke et al., 2002). Collectively, these findings may suggest that the TPJ plays a key role in representing bodily boundaries, distinguishing between self and nonself, and mediating the subjective sense of self-loss (Farrer and Frith, 2002), being critically involved in transformative experiences such as OBEs (Yaden et al., 2017) (Fig. 1). Fig. 1. ...
... Nevertheless, there are occasions in social situations where individuals need to distance themselves from others, to control the tendency to imitate others' actions and generate their independent actions (Sowden and Shah, 2014). These varying demands to inhibit or enhance the representation of self versus other for successful social interaction underscore the pivotal role of the ability to regulate or transition between neural representations attributed to oneself and others-referred to as 'self-other' control, which is also mediated by the TPJ (Sowden and Shah, 2014;Farrer and Frith, 2002). Pro-social behavior therefore depends on a delicate balance between maintaining a distinct sense of self and immersing in others' perspectives. ...
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are subjective phenomena during which individuals feel disembodied or perceive themselves as outside of their physical bodies, often resulting in profound and transformative effects. In particular, experiencers report greater heightened pro-social behavior, including more peaceful relationships, tolerance, and empathy. Drawing parallels with the phenomenon of ego dissolution induced by certain psyche-delic substances, we explore the notion that OBEs may engender these changes through ego dissolution, which fosters a deep-seated sense of unity and interconnectedness with others. We then assess potential brain mechanisms underlying the link between OBEs and empathy, considering the involvement of the temporoparietal junction and the Default Mode Network. This manuscript offers an examination of the potential pathways through which OBEs catalyze empathic enhancement, shedding light on the intricate interplay between altered states of consciousness and human empathy.
... This is consistent with later studies which also observed that feelings of helplessness and feelings of control are only moderately (negatively) correlated and thus seem to tap into different processes (Karsh et al., 2018). Further theoretical support for the distinction between SoPA and SoNA is provided by studies showing that the feeling of being an agent (which may be akin to positive agency) and the feeling of not being an agent/someone else is the agent (which may be akin to negative agency) may be associated with activation in different brain regions (Farrer and Frith, 2002;Farrer et al., 2003; see also Tapal et al., 2017 for an extensive discussion on this topic). ...
... Taken together, the present results demonstrate that SoPA and SoNA are two distinct factors (rather than two facets of the same construct) and strongly support the assumption of the multidimensional nature of general agency beliefs (as already proposed by Tapal et al., 2017 for the original Hebrew version). As outlined in the introduction, theoretical support for this distinction between SoPA and SoNA is provided by other studies, which observed that feelings of helplessness and feelings of control are only moderately (negatively) correlated (Karsh et al., 2018) and that the feeling of being an agent and the feeling of not being an agent may be associated with different neuronal structures (Farrer and Frith, 2002;Farrer et al., 2003; see also Tapal et al., 2017 for an extensive discussion on this topic). ...
Sense of agency refers to the experience of controlling one’s actions and through them events in the outside world. General agency beliefs can be measured with the Sense of Agency Scale (SoAS), which consists of the sense of positive agency subscale (i.e., feeling of being in control over one’s own body, mind, and environment) and the sense of negative agency subscale (i.e., feeling existentially helpless). The aim of the present study was to validate a German version of the SoAS. Using factor analyzes, we replicated the two-factor structure of the original version of the SoAS. Further, the German SoAS showed good model fits, good internal consistency, and moderate test–retest reliability. Construct validity was supported by significant low to moderate correlations of the German SoAS with other conceptually similar, but still distinct constructs such as general self-efficacy. Additionally, the German SoAS has an incremental value in explaining variance in the extent of subclinical symptoms of schizotypal personality disorder that goes beyond variance explained by constructs that are conceptually similar to sense of agency. Taken together, the results indicate that the German SoAS is a valid and suitable instrument to assess one’s general agency beliefs.
... Other studies found that the temporo-parietal junction, primary somatosensory cortex, premotor cortex, cingulate cortex, and the posterior superior temporal gyrus are related to illusory changes in the self location Ionta et al., 2011). The sense of agency on the other hand, has been related to the insula and inferior parietal cortex (Chambon et al., 2013;Farrer et al., 2003;Farrer, Frey, et al., 2008, Farrer, Bouchereau, et al., 2008Farrer & Frith, 2002), whereas experimentally-induced changes in the perceptual body image (perceived shape and size or posture of the body) have been related to the postcentral sulcus, intraparietal sulcus, insula, and inferior parietal lobule Kavounoudias et al., 2008;Naito et al., 2017). While the neural networks revealed by these neuroimaging studies are typically based on a correlative approach, a more causal link has been suggested by non-invasive transcranial T A B L E 1 Five core phenomenal experiences underlying the bodily self ...
... There is a large body of evidence indicating that the precuneus is involved in self processing, self awareness and consciousness (Cavanna & Trimble, 2006). Functional MRI and PET studies showed precuneus activations during numerous self related tasks, such as during visuospatial tasks conducted from a first-versus a third-person perspective, when participants attribute seen actions to self versus others, or judgment of personality traits pertaining to self versus others (David et al., 2006;Farrer & Frith, 2002;Kircher et al., 2000;Lambrey et al., 2012;Ruby & Decety, 2001;Vogeley et al., 2004). Interestingly, a PET study in a patient receiving EBS at the temporo-parietal junction, which triggered an OBE, revealed that the disembodied experience was related to activation of a brain network encompassing the right precuneus (De Ridder et al., 2007). ...
An increasing amount of recent research has focused on the multisensory and neural bases of the bodily self. This pre-reflective form of self is considered as multifaceted, incorporating phenomenal components, such as self location, body ownership, first-person perspective, agency, and the perceptual body image. Direct electrical brain stimulation (EBS) during presurgical evaluation of epilepsy and brain tumor re-section is a unique method to causally relate specific brain areas to the various phenomenal components of the bodily self. We conducted a systematic review of the literature describing altered phenomenal experience of the bodily self evoked by EBS. We included 42 articles and analyzed self reports from 221 patients. Three-dimensional density maps of EBS revealed that stimulation in the middle cingulum, inferior parietal lobule, supplementary motor area, posterior insula, hippocampal complex/amygdala, and precuneus most consistently altered one or several components of the bodily self. In addition, we found that only EBS in the parietal cortex induced disturbances of all five components of the bodily self considered in this review article. These findings inform current neuroscientific models of the bodily self.
... Neuroimaging techniques have been instrumental in uncovering the neural basis of agency [43,44,45,46,47,48]. For instance, Chambon et al. [49] found that reduced activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during action selection was negatively correlated with agency. ...
Background. Agency, a sense of control over one's actions and outcomes, is crucial for recovery from depressive symptoms. However, the mechanisms that enhance agency in individuals with depressive symptoms remain poorly understood. This study endeavors to elucidate these fundamental processes. Materials and Methods. We recruited 52 participants exhibiting depressive symptoms to participate in a novel Judgment of Agency (JoA) task. This task was structured with a 3 (effort: high load, medium load, low load) × 2 (outcome: win, miss) within-subject design to assess the impact of effort and outcome valence on agency. Throughout the task, we utilized functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to explore the neural mechanisms underlying agency. Furthermore, we conducted a randomized, sham-controlled, pre-post-test trial involving intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) targeted at the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) to investigate its potential to enhance agency. Participants were randomly allocated to either an active iTBS group or a sham group, with each receiving a single session of stimulation (600 pulses). The JoA task was conducted both before and after the stimulation. Results. Effort significantly influenced agency in individuals with depressive symptoms, with this effect being moderated by the outcomes' valences. Agency was positively correlated with self-efficacy (r = 0.28, P <0:05) when goals were achieved with effort, and with anxiety severity (r = 0.29, P <0:05) when goals were not achieved. Additionally, it was associated with the activation of several frontal brain regions (all P values < 0.01), including the left DLPFC, right premotor and supplementary motor areas, and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Application of iTBS over the left DLPFC significantly enhanced self-attributed agency, particularly when the outcomes were achieved under conditions of low-load effort. Conclusions. Our study highlights the critical role of effort in enhancing agency for individuals with depressive symptoms, with iTBS applied to the left DLPFC showing potential to enhance agency postgoal achievement. Moreover, the activation of the left IFG and the presence of anxiety are associated with maladaptive self-attributed agency, offering potential targets for therapeutic intervention.
... Neuroscience and spirituality have long been seen as separate realms of inquiry, each offering unique perspectives on the human experience. 1,2 While neuroscience delves into the intricate workings of the brain, seeking to unravel the mysteries of consciousness and cognition, spirituality contemplates the existence of the soul, a non-physical essence believed to underpin human identity and consciousness. However, in recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the potential overlap between these two domains. ...
Over the past five decades, scientific progress has underscored the imperative of integrating diverse fields of human inquiry, highlighting their interdependence. Thus, the segregation of humanities from neuroscience appears ludicrous, akin to a jest played upon rational thinkers. With the imminent advent of the human genome project, biotechnology is forging ahead, offering prospects for significant advancements in organ regeneration. While macro evolution may have concluded, micro-evolution persists within the realm of the brain. Neural Darwinism evolves continuously as long as consciousness and memory endure. Amidst diverse internal physiological mechanisms and external stimuli, an alternative theory to preprogrammed directionalism emerges, positing three mechanisms: developmental variation and selection, experiential selections, and reentrant signaling. Reentrant signaling reorients and correlates external inputs, preceding the development of consciousness and psychic evolution. Cholinergic and aminergic neuro-modelling systems emerge as fitting value systems. The primary function of consciousness lies in unifying the myriad categorizations inherent in perception into a cohesive SCENE. Evolution further entails the capacity of reentrant signaling to be guided by a value system, presenting abundant choices. With trillions of neurons and connections, freedom of choice may yield either enlightenment or tyranny. Intriguingly, the evolutionary progression toward worship has shifted from external environments to internal contemplation. Neuroscience stands poised as the next frontier in unraveling the mysteries of the mind and soul, representing the next stage in human understanding and evolution.
... Previous neuroimaging studies typically modulate the magnitude of SoA by either manipulating the authorship of the action, e.g. externally moving people's effector to generate passive "actions" (Balslev et al. 2006;Tsakiris et al. 2010;Kühn et al. 2013;Straube et al. 2017;van Kemenade et al. 2017van Kemenade et al. , 2019Uhlmann et al. 2020;Zapparoli et al. 2020), or perturbing the sensory feedback of the movement or its outcome by implementing temporal and spatial discrepancies (Farrer and Frith 2002;Farrer et al. 2003Farrer et al. , 2008Leube et al. 2003aLeube et al. , 2003bMatsuzawa et al. 2005;Balslev et al. 2006;David et al. 2007;Schnell et al. 2007;Spengler et al. subcortical regions such as the cerebellum and striatum (Haggard 2017;Seghezzi et al. 2019;Charalampaki et al. 2022). ...
Sense of agency (SoA) is the sensation that self-actions lead to ensuing perceptual consequences. The prospective mechanism emphasizes that SoA arises from motor prediction and its comparison with actual action outcomes, while the reconstructive mechanism stresses that SoA emerges from retrospective causal processing about the action outcomes. Consistent with the prospective mechanism, motor planning regions were identified by neuroimaging studies using the temporal binding (TB) effect, a behavioral measure often linked to implicit SoA. Yet, TB also occurs during passive observation of another’s action, lending support to the reconstructive mechanism, but its neural correlates remain unexplored. Here, we employed virtual reality (VR) to modulate such observation-based SoA and examined it with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). After manipulating an avatar hand in VR, participants passively observed an avatar’s “action” and showed a significant increase in TB. The binding effect was associated with the right angular gyrus and inferior parietal lobule, which are critical nodes for inferential and agency processing. These results suggest that the experience of controlling an avatar may potentiate inferential processing within the right inferior parietal cortex and give rise to the illusionary SoA without voluntary action.
... Kilteni et al. (2012) suggest embodiment consists of three subcomponents: the sense of self-location, the sense of agency, and the sense of body ownership. Generally, the sense of self-location has been most closely linked to having the first-person visual perspective of the body (Blanke and Metzinger 2009), sense of agency to the synchronicity of sensorimotor signals (Farrer and Frith 2002), and body ownership to the synchrony of multisensory signals (Tsakiris 2010). However, several studies have found that giving participants a first-person perspective over a virtual body was sufficient to create a feeling of embodiment even without multisensory or visuomotor synchronisation (Carey et al. 2019;Galvan Debarba et al. 2017;Slater et al. 2010). ...
This experiment examined the feasibility of 360° video as a tool for public health messaging by investigating the effect that viewing the 360° documentary The Waiting Room VR had on female viewers’ sense of identification, attitudes to breast cancer screening and mortality salience. A key part of the documentary places participants in a viewpoint ambiguously aligned to that of the film’s director and subject, Victoria Mapplebeck (VM), in a scene that recreates her radiotherapy treatment for breast cancer. Eighty female participants watched the documentary either sitting upright with the chair back set at a 90° angle or reclining with the chair back set at a 140° angle (consistent with VMs posture) under conditions of either high or low cognitive load. The effect of posture type was measured explicitly using questionnaires on presence, identification and breast self-examination (BSE) intention as well as implicitly using a lexical decision task to measure death-thought awareness (DTA). Reclined posture led to a higher sense of spatial presence but no increase in identification with VM. Significantly increased identification with VM led to greater intention to conduct BSE. There were no effects of posture, cognitive load or identification on DTA. The implications of these results for using 360° video as a behaviour change tool, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the terror management manipulation and the relevance of spatial viewpoint in 360° video are discussed.
... Three main hypotheses were explored: (1) brain activity related to self-perception: we hypothesized activity for self-vs.-other stimuli in areas associated with adults' self-recognition, including the frontal, parietal, and occipital regions [25], as well as the ACC and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) [34][35][36][37][38]; (2) brain activity related to 'other' perception: We expected increased brain activity elicited within the precuneus and the angular gyrus (temporoparietal junction (TPJ), the superior temporal sulcus (STS), the temporal poles, and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)) as these areas tend to be more active when looking at others compared to oneself [39,40]. Furthermore, we predicted higher activity for stimuli related to others compared to self in the temporal cortex and regions associated with recognizing visual stimuli. ...
Although adults and children differ in self-vs.-other perception, a developmental perspective on this discriminative ability at the brain level is missing. This study examined neural activation for self-vs.-other in a sample of 39 participants spanning four different age groups, from 4-year-olds to adults. Self-related stimuli elicited higher neural activity within two brain regions related to self-referential thinking, empathy, and social cognition processes. Second, stimuli related to ‘others’ (i.e., unknown peer) elicited activation within nine additional brain regions. These regions are associated with multisensory processing, somatosensory skills, language, complex visual stimuli, self-awareness, empathy, theory of mind, and social recognition. Overall, activation maps were gradually increasing with age. However, patterns of activity were non-linear within the medial cingulate cortex for ‘self’ stimuli and within the left middle temporal gyrus for ‘other’ stimuli in 7–10-year-old participants. In both cases, there were no self-vs.-other differences. It suggests a critical period where the perception of self and others are similarly processed. Furthermore, 11–19-year-old participants showed no differences between others and self within the left inferior orbital gyrus, suggesting less distinction between self and others in social learning. Understanding the neural bases of self-vs.-other discrimination during development can offer valuable insights into how social contexts can influence learning processes during development, such as when to introduce peer-to-peer teaching or group learning.
... "A brain in a vat" (BIV), without any bodily input, as the homonymous thought experiment postulates it to be (Block, 2005), would not have any visual experience due to the fact that it would not be able to interact with the environment. Sensory processing and the ability to control one's bodily movements, the so-called "sensorimotor coupling with the environment, " are thus mandatory for visual conscious experience (Farrer and Frith, 2002;Farrer et al., 2003;Haggard, 2005;Tsakiris et al., 2007). Moreover, that perfectly fits the neuroscientists' demonstration that consciousness and action seem to sometimes recruit the same neural networks used in the interaction with the environment (Frith et al., 2000;Leube et al., 2003). ...
The new approach in cognitive science largely known as “4E cognition” (embodied/embedded/enactive/extended cognition), which sheds new light on the complex dynamics of human consciousness, seems to revive some of Aristotle's views. For instance, the concept of “nature” ( phusis ) and the discussion on “active intellect” ( nous poiêtikos ) may be particularly relevant in this respect. Out of the various definitions of “nature” in Aristotle's Physics, On the Parts of Animals and Second Analytics , I will concentrate on nature defined as an inner impulse to movement, neither entirely “corporeal,” nor entirely “incorporeal,” and neither entirely “substantial,” nor entirely “accidental.” Related to that, I will consider the distinction in On the Soul between the “active” and the “passive” intellect, which Aristotle asserted as generally present in “nature” itself. By offering a conceptual and historical analysis of these views, I intend to show how the mind–body problem, which is essential for the explanation of consciousness, could be somewhat either eluded or transcended by both ancients and contemporaries on the basis of a subtle account of causation. While not attempting to diminish the impact of the Cartesian paradigm, which led to the so-called “hard problem of consciousness,” I suggest that the most recent neuroscience discoveries on the neurophysiological phenomena related to human consciousness could be better explained and understood if interpreted within a 4E cognition paradigm, inspired by some Aristotelian views.
... This involvement of the inferior parietal cortex in the sense of agency is supported by converging evidence from neuropsychology (Kinsbourne 2002), and other neuroimaging studies (e.g. Ruby & Decety 2001;Farrer & Frith 2002;Farrer et al. 2003), as well as from abnormalities in self-other distinctions found in schizophrenic patients (e.g. Spence et al. 1997). ...
Humans, like other primates, are intensely social creatures. One of the main functions of our brains is to enable us to be as skilful in social interactions as we are in our interactions with the physical world. Any differences between human brains and those of our nearest relatives, the great apes, are likely to be linked to our unique achievements in social interaction and communication rather than our motor or perceptual skills. Unique to humans is the ability to mentalise (or mind read), that is to perceive and communicate mental states, such as beliefs and desires. A key problem facing neuroscience is to uncover the biological mechanisms underlying our ability to read other minds and to show how these mechanisms evolved. To solve this problem we need to do experiments in which people (or animals) interact with one another rather than behaving in isolation. Such experiments are now being conducted in increasing numbers and many of the leading exponents of such experiments have contributed to this volume. ‘The Neuroscience of Social Interactions’ will be an important step in uncovering the biological mechanisms underlying social interactions - undoubtedly one of the major programmes for neuroscience in the twenty-first century.
... These regions are located in the frontal, parietal, and occipital areas (Devue & Brédart, 2011), as well as the ACC, and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) (Araujo et al., 2013;Hu et al., 2016c;Murray et al., 2012;Qin & Northoff, 2011). Conversely, we expected increased brain activity when observing someone else in the precuneus, and the angular gyrus, as these regions are activated when looking at others more than oneself (Asakage & Nakano, 2022;Farrer & Frith, 2002). Finally, we also expected higher activity for other than self within the temporal cortex and brain regions involved in the recognition of visual stimuli, previously associated with early identification of humans and human movement (Jastorff & Orban, 2009). ...
Although adults and children differ in self-versus-other perception, the developmental perspective on this discriminative ability is missing. We compared neural activation of self-vs-others in 39 participants of 4 different age groups (4 yo. to adulthood). Two brain regions, the MCC and right postcentral gyrus, exhibited respectively non-linear and gradual gains in discriminative abilities for self-vs-others stimuli. These regions play critical roles in self-referential processing, empathy, and social cognition. Nine brain regions showed linear increase for others-vs-self stimuli. These regions are associated with multisensory processing, somatosensory skills, complex visual stimuli, self-awareness, empathy, theory of mind, and social recognition. Understanding the neural basis of self-vs-others discrimination during development can inform when and how social contexts support learning processes during childhood and adolescence.
... We propose two possible explanations for this phenomenon. The first one, based on social cognition, frames interpersonal synchronization in terms of self-other integration, 34,[65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73] where distinct but overlapping brain networks 67,74-76 process information related to one's own movements and those observed in the other. To account for the dynamic development of dyadic rhythmic interactions, it was recently proposed that self-other integration and segregation are two metastable attractor states underlying coupled and de-coupled behaviors, respectively. ...
Humans exhibit a strong tendency to synchronize movements with each other, with visualperspective potentially influencing interpersonal synchronization. By manipulating the visualscenes of participants engaged in a joint finger-tapping task, we examined the effects of 1stand 2nd person visual perspectives on their coordination dynamics. We hypothesized thatperceiving the partner's movements from their 1st person perspective would enhancespontaneous interpersonal synchronization, potentially mediated by the embodiment of thepartner's hand. We observed significant differences in attractor dynamics across visualperspectives. Specifically, participants in 1st person coupling were unable to maintain de-coupled trajectories as effectively as in 2nd person coupling. Our findings suggest that visualperspective influences coordination dynamics in dyadic interactions, engaging error-correction mechanisms in individual brains as they integrate the partner's hand into theirbody representation. Our results have the potential to inform the development ofapplications for motor training and rehabilitation.
... Moreover, our results supported other previous studies that performed EEG analysis in chess experts and found that the activation of right frontal, occipital, and parietal lobes is more prominent compared to the left hemisphere [21][22][23][24]. This study also found that the activation of EEG signals in the experts was relatively higher when compared to the novices in task 6, which had the highest difficulty, clarifying that the experts also had different cortical activation based on the difficulty of tasks. ...
Purpose:
The expertise of medicians in clinical decision-making is very important since it improves the quality of medical services provided to patients. This study analyzed the characteristics of the decision-making process and confirmed clinicians' electroencephalography (EEG) characteristics by measuring their cerebral activity during clinical decision-making. This study aims to present learning directions for brain-based clinical decision-making to develop medical experts.
Methods:
This study was performed in the following two projects: (1) a qualitative study of clinical decision-making in a clinical scenario and (2) an analysis of differences in cortical activity of experts and novices through EEG.
Results:
In the 1st study, this study found that "confirmation of the patient's chief complaints," "physical examination," and "radiography reading" steps, which showed the most prominent differences in the experts' and novices' decision making, were set as the significant steps of dentists' clinical decision making. In the 2nd study, the experts' and novices' cortical activities were measured through a 32-channel EEG. In task 6, which had the lowest accuracy of diagnoses made by the experts, the brain activities in both groups were higher than in other tasks.
Conclusion:
This study developed and suggested a model of the decision-making process for experts and novices and suggested the basic directions for brain-based learning needed to raise experts based on brain activity.
... behavioral [Sato & Yasuda, 2005;Tsakiris et al., 2006, see David et al. (2008 for a review] and neuroimaging (David et al., 2007;Farrer et al., 2003;Farrer & Frith, 2002, for a recent meta-analysis see Zito et al., 2020) studies have addressed the cognitive architecture and neural basis for the SoA, highlighting the influence of prediction-outcome consistency on the SoA attribution (Frith et al., 2000;Miall & Wolpert, 1996;Synofzik et al., 2008). Importantly, the ability to distinguish self versus externally generated actions lies at the heart of the concept of agency and individual responsibility in our society, concerning important issues such as moral and legal status of actions (Haggard & Tsakiris, 2009). ...
Being able to distinguish between self and externally generated actions is a key factor influencing learning and adaptive behavior. Previous literature has highlighted that whenever a person makes or perceives an error, a series of error-related potentials (ErrPs) can be detected in the electroencephalographic (EEG) signal, such as the error-related negativity (ERN) component. Recently, ErrPs have gained a lot of interest for the use in brain-computer interface (BCI) applications, which give the user the ability to communicate by means of decoding his/her brain activity. Here, we explored the feasibility of employing a support vector machine classifier to accurately disentangle self-agency errors from other-agency errors from the EEG signal at a single-trial level in a sample of 23 participants. Our results confirmed the viability of correctly disentangling self/internal versus other/external agency-error attributions at different stages of brain processing based on the latency and the spatial topographical distribution of key ErrP features, namely, the ERN and P600 components, respectively. These results offer a new perspective on how to distinguish self versus externally generated errors providing new potential implementations on BCI systems.
... Furthermore, they are responsible for preparatory activities for the onset of movement [13]. The parietal association cortex is considered an active base for body movement imagery and a sense of body ownership [41,42]. Activities in the parietal association cortex are involved in the induction of a sense of agency. ...
Body awareness, which comprises the sense of body possession and action ownership, is essential for the adaptive movement of humans in response to external environments. However, existing body cognition assessments include many overt elements of cognitive functional activity, but no assessment captures the latent body cognition necessary for exercise and daily life activities. Therefore, this study aimed to devise a body cognition assessment system (BCAS) to examine the functional basis of body cognition in healthy participants and investigate its usefulness. The BCAS was used to assess body cognition on three occasions, and BCAS values were calculated from the results of the assessment. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to determine reproducibility. Neural activity in the brain during somatocognition assessment while conducting the BCAS was measured by electroencephalogram. Moreover, the functional basis for somatocognition with the BCAS was also investigated. The results demonstrated that the BCAS values varied across the three administrations (ICC (1.3) = 0.372), and changes in the state of neural activity in the brain were observed. The results suggest that assessment using the BCAS may be a new indicator of ever-changing body cognition.
... For example, investigations into the neural bases of self-location (the experience of occupying a volume of space) can be linked to studies of the neural bases of spatial navigation and spatial memory, which have been deciphered in several animal models (e.g., Ulanovsky and Moss, 2007;Killian et al., 2012;Cullen and Taube, 2017;Grieves and Jeffery, 2017;Moser et al., 2017), or in humans using intracranial EEG recordings (e.g., Ekstrom et al., 2003). Similarly, understanding the neural bases of the sense of agency -approached to date mostly through correlative studies [e.g., Farrer andFrith, 2002 reviewed in Charalampaki et al. (2022), Abdulkarim et al. (2023)] and a few causal studies (Dary et al., 2023) may require to compile results from studies on motor control, volition, intentional movement and sensory feedback (Haggard, 2017). There is indeed only rare studies in non-human primates or other animal models that directly investigated the sense of agency (Kaneko and Tomonaga, 2011;Couchman, 2015). ...
The last two decades have seen a surge of interest in the mechanisms underpinning bodily self-consciousness (BSC). Studies showed that BSC relies on several bodily experiences (i.e., self-location, body ownership, agency, first-person perspective) and multisensory integration. The aim of this literature review is to summarize new insights and novel developments into the understanding of the neural bases of BSC, such as the contribution of the interoceptive signals to the neural mechanisms of BSC, and the overlap with the neural bases of conscious experience in general and of higher-level forms of self (i.e., the cognitive self). We also identify the main challenges and propose future perspectives that need to be conducted to progress into the understanding of the neural mechanisms of BSC. In particular, we point the lack of crosstalk and cross-fertilization between subdisciplines of integrative neuroscience to better understand BSC, especially the lack of research in animal models to decipher the neural networks and systems of neurotransmitters underpinning BSC. We highlight the need for more causal evidence that specific brain areas are instrumental in generating BSC and the need for studies tapping into interindividual differences in the phenomenal experience of BSC and their underlying mechanisms.
... Self-related processing is known to engage several cortical regions, particularly along the midline, including the prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and parietal regions [89]. Moreover, some neuroimaging studies have already reported insular activity, thus implying a potential link with the re-representations created by the anterior part of the insula, after analysis and interpretation of the internal bodily states that have been forwarded to its posterior part [111,[180][181][182]. ...
The insula is a multiconnected brain region that centralizes a wide range of information, from the most internal bodily states, such as interoception, to high-order processes, such as knowledge about oneself. Therefore, the insula would be a core region involved in the self networks. Over the past decades, the question of the self has been extensively explored, highlighting differences in the descriptions of the various components but also similarities in the global structure of the self. Indeed, most of the researchers consider that the self comprises a phenomenological part and a conceptual part, in the present moment or extending over time. However, the anatomical substrates of the self, and more specifically the link between the insula and the self, remain unclear. We conducted a narrative review to better understand the relationship between the insula and the self and how anatomical and functional damages to the insular cortex can impact the self in various conditions. Our work revealed that the insula is involved in the most primitive levels of the present self and could consequently impact the self extended in time, namely autobiographical memory. Across different pathologies, we propose that insular damage could engender a global collapse of the self.
... This process compares sensory predictions with actual motor feedback and contributes to motor learning and to distinguishing between self-generated and externally generated stimuli. Abnormalities are detected in the ANG when agency (i.e., "my sense of causing a behavior") is violated (23)(24)(25)(26). The ANG may be involved in more normal sensory conflict detection (27). ...
Background:
The most common cause of lower motor neuron facial palsy is Bell's palsy (BP). BP results in partial or complete inability to automatically move the facial muscles on the affected side and, in some cases, to close the eyelids, which can cause permanent eye damage. This study investigated changes in brain function and connectivity abnormalities in patients with BP.
Methods:
This study included 46 patients with unilateral BP and 34 healthy controls (HCs). Resting-state brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) images were acquired, and Toronto Facial Grading System (TFGS) scores were obtained for all participants. The fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) was estimated, and the relationship between the TFGS and fALFF was determined using correlation analysis for brain regions with changes in fALFF in those with BP versus HCs. Brain regions associated with TFGS were used as seeds for further functional connectivity (FC) analysis; relationships between FC values of abnormal areas and TFGS scores were also analyzed.
Results:
Activation of the right precuneus, right angular gyrus, left supramarginal gyrus, and left middle occipital gyrus was significantly decreased in the BP group. fALFF was significantly higher in the right thalamus, vermis, and cerebellum of the BP group compared with that in the HC group (P<0.05). The FC between the left middle occipital gyrus and right angular gyrus, left precuneus, and right middle frontal gyrus increased sharply, but decreased in the left angular gyrus, left posterior cingulate gyrus, left middle frontal gyrus, inferior cerebellum, and left middle temporal gyrus. Furthermore, the fALFF in the left middle occipital gyrus was negatively correlated with TFGS score (R=0.144; P=0.008).
Conclusions:
The pathogenesis of BP is closely related to functional reorganization of the cerebral cortex. Patients with BP have altered fALFF activity in cortical regions associated with facial motion feedback monitoring.
... For instance, both share a network in the left middle insula [52] and inter-effector regions in the motor cortex display strong functional connectivity, suggesting that body control and action are part of a common circuit [53]. Pre-reflective SA and SO can be distinguished from attribution judgments [54][55][56], i.e., the ability to attribute an action to its proper agent (self or other), that also integrates sensory information (the visual sense being determinant [57,58]). This integration processes multiple sources indirectly due to action and its congruence to prediction of one's self-narrative and understanding [41]. ...
The concept of agency, or an individual's sense of control over their actions and external events, is important in the context of peritraumatic dissociation, and its cardinal importance in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This article provides a roadmap for the development of agency-based therapies in the future, along with offering an "enactive" perspective on trauma. We discuss the clinical implications of this perspective in terms of techniques and interventions to mitigate symptomatology. We also discuss the potential for the use of sensorimotor technologies, such as gesture sonification devices, to enhance and restore agency during PTSD recovery.
... One region of particular interest is the insula and its role in body awareness. 104 This region has been shown to have vast connections with many sensory regions 105,106 and has been associated with neglect. 107,108 RT General impairment was associated with lesions in the STG and MTG and provide further evidence for the role of these regions in general visuospatial attention. ...
Visuospatial neglect is a disorder characterized by an impairment of attention, most commonly to the left side of space in individuals with stroke or injury to the right hemisphere. Clinical diagnosis is largely based on performance on pen and paper examinations that are unable to accurately measure the speed of processing environmental stimuli – important for interacting in our dynamic world. Numerous studies of impairment after visuospatial neglect demonstrate delayed reaction times when reaching to the left. However, little is known of the visuospatial impairment in other spatial directions and, further, the influence of the arm being assessed.
In this study, we quantify the ability of a large cohort of 204 healthy control participants (females = 102) and 265 individuals with stroke (right hemisphere damage = 162, left hemisphere damage = 103; mean age 62) to generate goal-directed reaches. Participants used both their contralesional and ipsilesional arms to perform a centre-out visually guided reaching task in the horizontal plane.
We found the range of visuospatial impairment can vary dramatically across individuals with some individuals displaying reaction time impairments restricted to a relatively small portion of the workspace, whereas others displayed reaction time impairments in all spatial directions. Reaction time impairments were observed in individuals with right or left hemisphere lesions (48% and 30%, respectively). Directional impairments commonly rotated clockwise when reaching with the left versus the right arms. Impairment in all spatial directions were more prevalent in right than left hemisphere lesions (32% and 12%, respectively). Behavioral Inattention Test scores significantly correlated (r = -0.49, p < 0.005) with reaction time impairments but a large portion of individuals not identified as having visuospatial neglect on the Behavioral Inattention Test still displayed reaction time impairments (35%). MRI and CT scans identified distinct white matter and cortical regions of damage for individuals with directional (insula, inferior frontal occipital fasciculus, and inferior longitudinal fasciculus) and general (superior and middle temporal gyri) visuospatial impairment.
This study highlights the prevalence and diversity of visuospatial impairments that can occur following stroke.
... the insular cortex and right temporoparietal cortex reflect visuo-proprioceptive 645 synchrony and asynchrony, respectively646 In the previous literature, it has been suggested that the right angular gyrus located in the 647 temporoparietal region is involved in the loss of agency when there is a mismatch between the 648 expected sensory consequences of self-generated movement and the sensory feedback(Farrer et al., 649 2003; Farrer & Frith, 2002; Tsakiris et al., 2010). Furthermore, it has been reported that the insular 650 cortex shows increases in activation when people experience agency (Farrer et al., 2003; Farrer & 651Frith, 2002). However, in our main planned contrasts reported above, we did not find any changes in 652 activation in these two regions, even at the level of uncorrected p values (p<0.005). ...
Body ownership and the sense of agency are two central aspects of bodily self-consciousness. While multiple neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural correlates of body ownership and agency separately, few studies have investigated the relationship between these two aspects during voluntary movement when such experiences naturally combine. By eliciting the moving rubber hand illusion with active or passive finger movements during functional magnetic resonance imaging, we isolated activations reflecting the sense of body ownership and agency, respectively, as well as their interaction, and assessed their overlap and anatomical segregation. We found that perceived hand ownership was associated with activity in premotor, posterior parietal and cerebellar regions, whereas the sense of agency over the hand’s movements was related to activity in the dorsal premotor cortex and superior temporal cortex. Moreover, one section of the dorsal premotor cortex showed overlapping activity for ownership and agency, and somatosensory cortical activity reflected the interaction of ownership and agency with higher activity when both agency and ownership were experienced. We further found that activations previously attributed to agency in the left insular cortex and right temporoparietal junction reflected the synchrony or asynchrony of visuo-proprioceptive stimuli rather than agency. Collectively, these results reveal the neural bases of agency and ownership during voluntary movement. Although the neural representations of these two experiences are largely distinct, there are interactions and functional neuroanatomical overlap during their combination, which has bearing on theories on bodily self-consciousness.
... In line with this finding, PPC has been associated mainly to integration and processing of spatial information (Andersen and Zipser, 1988;Quintana and Fuster, 1993;Haggard, 2017), as well as sensory-spatial transformation processes (Torres et al., 2010), rather than temporal cues (Quintana and Fuster, 1993). Moreover, the effect of the spatial manipulation was a stronger, and not reduced, activity in PPC when the observed movement was in accordance with the executed one, unlike previous studies reporting suppression of neural activity associated to self-generated actions or action attribution to the self (Fink et al., 1999;Farrer and Frith, 2002;Jeannerod, 2009). However, suppression mechanisms that appears at the behavioral level, such as the well-described inability to tickle oneself (Blakemore et al., 2000), and the physiological attenuation of SEP amplitude due to the gating effect during movement, have been shown to have different neurophysiological correlates (Palmer et al., 2016). ...
Visuo-motor integration shapes our daily experience and underpins the sense of feeling in control over our actions. The last decade has seen a surge in robotically and virtually mediated interactions, whereby bodily actions ultimately result in an artificial movement. But despite the growing number of applications, the neurophysiological correlates of visuo-motor processing during human-machine interactions under dynamic conditions remain scarce. Here we address this issue by employing a bimanual robotic interface able to track voluntary hands movement, rendered in real-time into the motion of two virtual hands. We experimentally manipulated the visual feedback in the virtual reality with spatial and temporal conflicts and investigated their impact on (1) visuo-motor integration and (2) the subjective experience of being the author of one's action (i.e., sense of agency). Using somatosensory evoked responses measured with electroencephalography, we investigated neural differences occurring when the integration between motor commands and visual feedback is disrupted. Our results show that the right posterior parietal cortex encodes for differences between congruent and spatially-incongruent interactions. The experimental manipulations also induced a decrease in the sense of agency over the robotically-mediated actions. These findings offer solid neurophysiological grounds that can be used in the future to monitor integration mechanisms during movements and ultimately enhance subjective experience during human-machine interactions.
... The insular cortex plays an essential role in the consciousness processes of one's body and its properties (61)(62)(63)(64), emotions (65), empathy (66), sense of agency (67), and language (68,69). The insula is thought to be involved in the violation of rules and social conventions as well (70), together with processing convergent information to produce a relevant emotional context in response to sensory experience and in a general salience system that monitors the FIGURE 2 Total BPRS-LGI correlation, between-group differences. ...
Introduction
Interest in identifying the clinical implications of the neuropathophysiological background of schizophrenia is rising, including changes in cortical gyrification that may be due to neurodevelopmental abnormalities. Inpatients with schizophrenia can show abnormal gyrification of cortical regions correlated with the symptom severity.
Methods
Our study included 36 patients that suffered an acute episode of schizophrenia and have undergone structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to calculate the local gyrification index (LGI).
Results
In the whole sample, the severity of symptoms significantly correlated with higher LGI in different cortical areas, including bilateral frontal, cingulate, parietal, temporal cortices, and right occipital cortex. Among these areas, patients with low hostility symptoms (LHS) compared to patients with high hostility symptoms (HHS) showed significantly lower LGI related to the severity of symptoms in bilateral frontal and temporal lobes.
Discussion
The severity of psychopathology correlated with higher LGI in large portions of the cerebral cortex, possibly expressing abnormal neural development in schizophrenia. These findings could pave the way for further studies and future tailored diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.
... Also, Ehrsson et al. (2004) compared the functional images obtained after the SoO's development with those collected before the illusion occurs, showing enhanced activation of the left precentral sulcus and the right cerebellum. The areas supporting the SoA are instead the prefrontal and parietal cortex (Farrer et al., 2003;Farrer & Frith, 2002;Fink et al., 1999), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Fink et al., 1999), the insula (Brass & Haggard, 2007;Farrer et al., 2003;Karnath et al., 2005;Klein et al., 2007), and the cerebellum (Fink et al., 1999). ...
The Sense of Ownership (SoO) and the Sense of Agency (SoA) are two key components of bodily self-consciousness. In this experiment, we investigated how they are affected by variations in the ecological validity of the moving Rubber Hand Illusion (mRHI) paradigm, which typically include three movement conditions: active congruent, passive congruent, and active incongruent. These conditions were either in a session in which no auditory feedback associated with finger-tapping was eliminated, or in a session in which such a feedback occurred. Since the presence of the auditory feedback more closely corresponds to what individuals experience in daily life when they tap their finger on a surface, sessions with feedback are more ecologically valid, and should thus result in a more marked SoO. Results indicated that in the active movement condition in which the illusion is typically found (congruent), the effect was enhanced when the feedback was present. This advantage emerged on both on objective and subjective measures of SoO. The SoA, on the other hand, is not affected by the auditory feedback.
... Carhart-Harris and Friston (2010) Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2013). Further studies have confirmed that people who reported mystical and out-of-body experiences show decreases in activation of other brain areas beyond the DMN such as the superior and inferior parental lobe, as well as the nearby temporo-parietal junction-a cluster of brain regions that represent self-other boundaries and egocentric spatial awareness (Farrer & Frith, 2002;Johnstone, Bodling, Cohen, Christ, & Wegrzyn, 2012). ...
The achievement of sustainable prosperity requires the enhancement of human wellbeing alongside increased care for the environment. In recent years, much has been written on the role of different mental states and their potential to influence our way of thinking and, perhaps more importantly, the way we act. In this working paper, we explore the emerging potential of a type of mental state known as Self-Transcendent Experiences (STEs) to deliver beneficial effects on human wellbeing and sustainable attitudes and behaviours. Self-transcendent experiences can be facilitated by experiences of flow, awe and meditation, as well as psychedelic experiences. Some of these experiences can occur naturally, through sometimes unexpected encounters with nature or during immersion in every-day activities that one intrinsically enjoys, as well as through more intentional practices such as meditation or the use of psychedelics. We demonstrate how each of the four alternative types of STEs share some similar neurological underpinnings and review their links to improvements in human wellbeing and sustainable attitudes and behaviours. We also highlight potential risks across the different varieties of STEs and consider factors that need to be considered if they are to be employed as a practical means of supporting sustainable prosperity.
... In particular, the prefrontal cortex would interact with the anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala, determining low emotionality, attentive difficulties, autonomic mitigation, and indifference to pain (100,101,111,112). In addition, hypoactivity of posterior parietal regions has been associated with deficits in processing and integrating somatosensory information (111,(113)(114)(115) and low selfawareness (116). ...
Background
The present study examines the relationship between obesity, executive functions, and body image in a nonclinical population from southern Italy.
Methods
General executive functioning (Frontal Assessment Battery–15), and body image disturbances (Body Uneasiness Test) were assessed in a sample including 255 participants (138 females, M age = 43.51 years, SD = 17.94, range = 18–86 years; M body mass index (BMI) = 26.21, SD = 4.32, range = 18.03–38.79).
Findings
Multiple Linear Regression Analysis indicated that age, years of education, FAB15 score, body image concerns, and avoidance predicted the variance of BMI. A subsequent mediation analysis highlighted that the indirect effect of FAB15 on BMI through avoidance was statistically significant.
Interpretation
Our results suggest that more performing executive functioning predicts a decrease in BMI that is partially due to the mitigation of avoidance behaviors.
... Importantly, explicit and implicit agency are differentiated at the neural level, with different areas being involved. Activation of the anterior insula seems to be particularly related to explicit positive agency ("that was me"), whereas the inferior parietal cortex is involved during externally driven action [14]. Several authors reported an increased activation of the angular gyrus in the inferior parietal lobe during explicit judgment of negative agency ("that was not me") [15,16]. ...
Our ability to perform voluntary actions and make choices is shaped by the motivation from having control over the resulting effects (agency) and positive outcomes (reward). We offer an overview of distinct and common behavioral and neural signatures of agency and reward. We discuss their typical and atypical developmental trajectories, focusing on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is characterized by neurodiverse processes underlying action selection. We propose that reduced sensitivity to agency and reward in ASD may be related to atypical multisensory processes and motor planning, with potential for understanding restricted and repetitive behaviors. We emphasize the limitations of the existing literature, and prospects for future research. Understanding the neurocognitive processes that shape the way people with ASD select actions and perceive outcomes is essential to support not only learning, but also volition and self-determination.
... That is, the results of movements are experienced as being self-caused if the predicted sensory feedback matches the actual sensory feedback; however, in case of mismatch, they are experienced as being generated externally 13 . In fact, SoA typically decreases with increasing temporal or spatial discrepancies between self-generated movements and their sensory feedback [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] . In recent years, there has been increasing interest in whether SoA changes with development or remains constant throughout life. ...
Along with the comparator model, the perception of action-outcome regularity is involved in the generation of sense of agency. In addition, the perception of action-outcome regularity is related to motor performance. However, no studies have examined the developmental changes in the perception of action-outcome regularity. The current study measured perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity and manual dexterity in 200 children aged between 5 and 16 years. The results showed that perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity was significantly lower in 5–6-year-old children than in 9–16-year-old children, and that it was significantly lower in children with low manual dexterity than in children with medium to high manual dexterity. Correlation analyses revealed significant correlations of age and perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity, but no significant correlation of manual dexterity and perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity, either overall or in any age band. The present study suggests that perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity is immature at 5–6 years of age and that it may be impaired in 5–16-year-old children with poor manual dexterity.
... Given this low overall level of experienced ownership, the often weak or absent effects of (in)compatibility of resident and remote effects on explicit ratings of ownership might also be due to a floor effect (Everitt, 2006). Sense of agency however has been shown to be more easily elicited also by relatively arbitrary effects in past research, provided that these effects were sufficiently contingent on a person's control (e.g., Chambon et al., 2014;Chambon, Wenke, Fleming, Prinz, & Haggard, 2013;Farrer & Frith, 2002;Sperduti, Delaveau, Fossati, & Nadel, 2011 (Kalckert et al., 2019a;. ...
The “active self” approach suggests that any object we manipulate voluntarily and foreseeably becomes part of our “self” in the sense that we feel control over this object (sense of agency) and experience it as belonging to our own body (sense of ownership). While there is considerable evidence that we can indeed experience both a sense of agency and a sense of ownership over a broad variety of objects when we control these through our actions, the approach has also been criticized for exaggerating the flexibility of the human self. In this thesis, I investigate the influence that the relationship between the body movements controlling an object and the movements of the object itself has on the process of integrating an object into the self. I demonstrate that fully controlling an object is not sufficient for it to be integrated into the self since both explicit and implicit measures of the sense of agency and the sense of ownership indicate less or no integration when body movements are transformed into inverted object movements. Furthermore, I show that such inversions lead to the downregulation of sensory signals either from the body or from the controlled object in order to deal with the conflicting multisensory information when performing such actions. I argue that this downregulation is the underlying factor behind the diminished or eliminated integration of inverted body and object movements and I discuss further pathways for possible future studies building up on these findings.
This article aims to propose a new look on the distinction between mind, environment and culture. While the first of these has mostly been understood as an interior and individual dimension of experience both by common sense and modern philosophy, an evolutionary and ecological standpoint could help us rethink the practices, information and technologies forming the niches of Homo sapiens societies both as the ecological horizon of our actions and as collective and shared minds possessing an external and partially detached existence. Every human being participates in these collective ‘exteriorities’, extends his body through tools, organizes his behaviour with respect to others and absorbs the social context of his technologies, languages, institutions, values in a partial and unique standpoint, that is an individual ‘interiority’.
Functional connectivity resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging has been proposed to predict antipsychotic treatment response in schizophrenia. However, only a few prospective studies have examined baseline resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data in drug-naïve first-episode schizophrenia patients with regard to subsequent treatment response. Data-driven approaches to conceptualize and measure functional connectivity patterns vary broadly, and model-free, voxel-wise, whole-brain analysis techniques are scarce. Here, we apply such a method, called connectivity concordance mapping to resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data acquired from an Asian sample (n = 60) with first-episode psychosis, prior to pharmaceutical treatment. Using a longitudinal design, 12 months after the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured and classified patients into two groups based on psychometric testing: treatment responsive and treatment resistant. Next, we compared the two groups’ connectivity concordance maps that were derived from the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data at baseline. We have identified consistently higher functional connectivity in the treatment-resistant group in a network including the left hippocampus, bilateral insula and temporal poles. These data-driven novel findings can help researchers to consider new regions of interest and facilitate biomarker development in order to identify treatment-resistant schizophrenia patients early, in advance of treatment and at the time of their first psychotic episode.
The feeling of body ownership is a peculiar aspect of bodily self-awareness which allows us to distinguish it from other objects in the external world. Usually, in fact, we do not experience this kind of feeling toward objects other than our own body, however, the paradigm of the rubber hand illusion has allowed a series of sensory inputs to be combined in order to generate the feeling of ownership over an artificial hand. This result provided old explanatory models about the emergence of ownership of body parts to be revised and initiated several researches aimed at investigating their underlying neural mechanisms. Our body representation depends on the integration of several inputs (e.g., visual, proprioceptive and tactile information), however the role of auditory cues on bodily perception have been less investigated.
Core symptoms in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), like hallucinations or ego-disturbances, have been associated with a failure of internal forward models to predict the sensory outcomes of self-generated actions. Importantly, forward model predictions must also be able to flexibly recalibrate to changing environmental conditions, for example to account for additional delays between action and outcome. We investigated whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can be used to improve these sensorimotor temporal recalibration mechanisms in patients and healthy individuals. While receiving tDCS on the cerebellum, temporo-parietal junction, supplementary motor area, or sham stimulation, patients with SSD and healthy control participants were repeatedly exposed to delays between actively or passively elicited button presses and auditory outcomes. Effects of this procedure on temporal perception were assessed with a delay detection task. Similar recalibration outcomes and faciliatory effects of cerebellar tDCS on recalibration were observed in SSD and healthy individuals. Our findings indicate that sensorimotor recalibration mechanisms may be preserved in SSD and highlight the importance of the cerebellum in both patients and healthy individuals for this process. They further suggest that cerebellar tDCS could be a promising tool for addressing deficits in action-outcome monitoring and related adaptive sensorimotor processes in SSD.
The sense of embodiment refers to the sensations of being inside, having, and controlling a body. In virtual reality, it is possible to substitute a person’s body with a virtual body, referred to as an avatar. Modulations of the sense of embodiment through modifications of this avatar have perceptual and behavioural consequences on users that can influence the way users interact with the virtual environment. Therefore, it is essential to define metrics that enable a reliable assessment of the sense of embodiment in virtual reality to better understand its dimensions, the way they interact, and their influence on the quality of interaction in the virtual environment. In this review, we first introduce the current knowledge on the sense of embodiment, its dimensions (senses of agency, body ownership, and self-location), and how they relate the ones with the others. Then, we dive into the different methods currently used to assess the sense of embodiment, ranging from questionnaires to neurophysiological measures. We provide a critical analysis of the existing metrics, discussing their advantages and drawbacks in the context of virtual reality. Notably, we argue that real-time measures of embodiment, which are also specific and do not require double tasking, are the most relevant in the context of virtual reality. Electroencephalography seems a good candidate for the future if its drawbacks (such as its sensitivity to movement and practicality) are improved. While the perfect metric has yet to be identified if it exists, this work provides clues on which metric to choose depending on the context, which should hopefully contribute to better assessing and understanding the sense of embodiment in virtual reality.
Neuroelectric and imaging studies of meditation are reviewed. Electroencephalographic measures indicate an overall slowing subsequent to meditation, with theta and alpha activation related to proficiency of practice. Sensory evoked potential assessment of concentrative meditation yields amplitude and latency changes for some components and practices. Cognitive event-related potential evaluation of meditation implies that practice changes attentional allocation. Neuroimaging studies indicate increased regional cerebral blood flow measures during meditation. Taken together, meditation appears to reflect changes in anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal areas. Neurophysiological meditative state and trait effects are variable but are beginning to demonstrate consistent outcomes for research and clinical applications. Psychological and clinical effects of meditation are summarized, integrated, and discussed with respect to neuroimaging data.
Our sense of agency, the subjective experience of controlling our actions, is a crucial component of self-awareness and motor control. It is thought to originate from the comparison between intentions and actions across broad cortical network. However, the underlying neural mechanisms are still unknown. We hypothesized that oscillations in the theta-alpha range, thought to orchestrate long-range neural connectivity, may mediate sensorimotor comparisons. To test this, we manipulated the relation between intentions and actions in a tetraplegic user of a brain machine interface (BMI), decoding primary motor cortex (M1) activity to restore hand functionality. We found that the pre-movement phase of low-alpha oscillations in M1 predicted the participant’s agency judgements. Using EEG-BMI in healthy participants, we linked M1 and supplementary motor area (SMA) pre-movement alpha oscillations to agency ratings, and to changes in their functional connectivity with sensory areas. These findings argue for phase-driven gating as a key mechanism for sensorimotor integration and agency.
Auditory hallucinations (AH) are a debilitating symptom in psychosis, impacting cognition and real world functioning. Recent thought conceptualizes AH as a consequence of long-range brain communication dysfunction, or circuitopathy, within the auditory sensory/perceptual, language, and cognitive control systems. Recently we showed in first-episode psychosis (FEP) that, despite overall intact white matter integrity in the cortical-cortical and cortical-subcortical language tracts and the callosal tracts connecting auditory cortices, the severity of AH correlated inversely with white matter integrity. However, that hypothesis-driven isolation of specific tracts likely missed important white matter concomitants of AH. In this report, we used a whole-brain data-driven dimensional approach using correlational tractography to associate AH severity with white matter integrity in a sample of 175 individuals. Diffusion Spectrum Imaging (DSI) was used to image diffusion distribution. Quantitative Anisotropy (QA) in three tracts was greater with increased AH severity (FDR < 0.001) and QA in three tracts was lower with increased AH severity (FDR < 0.01). White matter tracts showing associations between QA and AH were generally associated with frontal-parietal-temporal connectivity (tracts with known relevance for cognitive control and the language system), in the cingulum bundle, and in prefrontal inter-hemispheric connectivity. The results of this whole brain data-driven analysis suggest that subtle white matter alterations connecting frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes in the service of sensory-perceptual, language/semantic, and cognitive control processes impact the expression of auditory hallucination in FEP. Disentangling the distributed neural circuits involved in AH should help to develop novel interventions, such as non-invasive brain stimulation.
Distinguishing imagination and thoughts from information we perceived from the environment, a process called reality-monitoring, is important in everyday situations. Although reality monitoring seems to overlap with the concept of self-monitoring, which allows one to distinguish self-generated actions or thoughts from those generated by others, the two concepts remain largely separate cognitive domains and their common brain substrates have received little attention. We investigated the brain regions involved in these two cognitive processes and explored the common brain regions they share. To do this, we conducted two separate coordinate-based meta-analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies assessing the brain regions involved in reality- and self-monitoring. Few brain regions survived threshold-free cluster enhancement family-wise multiple comparison correction (p < .05), likely owing to the small number of studies identified. Using uncorrected statistical thresholds recommended by Signed Differential Mapping with Permutation of Subject Images, the meta-analysis of reality-monitoring studies (k = 9 studies including 172 healthy subjects) revealed clusters in the lobule VI of the cerebellum, the right anterior medial prefrontal cortex and anterior thalamic projections. The meta-analysis of self-monitoring studies (k = 12 studies including 192 healthy subjects) highlighted the involvement of a set of brain regions including the lobule VI of the left cerebellum and fronto-temporo-parietal regions. We showed with a conjunction analysis that the lobule VI of the cerebellum was consistently engaged in both reality- and self-monitoring. The current findings offer new insights into the common brain regions underlying reality-monitoring and self-monitoring, and suggest that the neural signature of the self that may occur during self-production should persist in memories.
In the monograph «Kritische und klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete der Sinnestäuschungen» (1885) and in its Russian version «On pseudohallucinations» (1890) V.Kh. Kandinsky was the first in the world to present a detailed differentiation of clinical forms of false sensory perceptions, specificating simple hallucinations, dream-like hallucinations and two varieties of pseudohallucinations. He set out descriptions of phenomena that resemble false perceptions, but are not them: unvoluntary speech, some forms of pathology of the ideation sphere, and pathology of the imaginary sphere. Several mental states described by the author later entered the psychiatric lexicon under new names: «speech-motor hallucinations» (Séglas), «delusion of the imagination» (Dupré and Logre), «autistic thinking» (Bleuler), «hypotonia of consciousness» (Berze), «oneiroid form of experience» (Mayer-Gross). Kandinsky supplemented clinical descriptions with an original pathophysiological hypothesis. The author believed that the thalamus, specific to each modality and multimodal cell groups of the sensory cortex, centers of abstract (symbolized) representations, and Broca’s center are involved in various configurations in the acts of sensory perception and the origin of the forms of his deceptions; the state of the frontal functions and the nature of the reflection of images of perception in consciousness are of paramount importance.The author illustrated his hypothesis with schemes of differentiated involvement of thalamocortical and transcortical networks. This article analyzes the reasons why Kandinsky’s hypothesis remained unknown to specialists until recently, and his descriptions of the forms of false sensory perceptions were taught in a distorted or simplified form. Despite the target testing of the hypothesis having never been carried out, all its main provisions are confirmed by the results of modern research. Russian psychiatrists successfully apply the systematics of hallucinations developed by Kandinsky in clinical practice. Remaining to this day the only clinical and pathophysiological hypothesis, Kandinsky´s clinical and pathophysiological hypothesis is extremely promising for studying the etiopathogenesis of mental illness and developing effective means of treating them.
The integration of artificially intelligent decision support system agents as part of the external resourcing function of human resources management raises the issue of the effectiveness of the collaborative process between these agents and human resources managers and the cognitive and perceptual factors underlying the willingness to delegate such decisions. However, little is known about the neuropsychophysiological factors leading to the willingness to delegate decision-making to artificially intelligent decision support system agents in collaborative decision-making within human resources management. This research proposal explores how the perception of agency and trust affects the willingness to delegate personnel selection decisions to such agents. A single-factor within-subject design will be developed, where information provisioning as a proxy for situation awareness will be manipulated. Neuropsychophysiological and perceptual data will be collected to identify the neuropsychophysiological correlates of the perceptions of agency and trust and determine how they affect this delegation process.
The self-perception or self-experience of patients with depersonalization/derealization disorder (DPD) is altered, leading to a profound disruption in self-awareness. The main aim of the study is to explore the characteristics of subliminal self-face processing in DPD patients. To our knowledge, this is the first experimental study that has measured and evaluated subliminal self-processing in DPD. To better understand this, we examined the ability of patients with DPD and healthy controls (HC) to identify pictures of faces using an experimental paradigm of breaking continuous flash suppression. There were 23 DPD outpatients from Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical University and 23 matched HC who participated in this experiment. The time needed for a face to break into awareness was taken as the measure of participants’ subliminal processing of that face. The results indicated that there were significant differences between the DPD patients and HC in subliminal reaction times to different faces. Under experimental conditions, the average reaction response of self-face recognition in the HC group was significantly faster than for a famous face. However, this difference was not observed in DPD patients, which means that DPD patients did not show the processing advantage of their own faces as did the HC. The results suggest a deficit in subliminal self-face processing in DPD.
The generation of an internal body model and its continuous update is essential in sensorimotor control. Although known to rely on proprioceptive sensory feedback, the underlying mechanism that transforms this sensory feedback into a dynamic body percept remains poorly understood. However, advances in the development of genetic tools for proprioceptive circuit elements, including the sensory receptors, are beginning to offer new and unprecedented leverage to dissect the central pathways responsible for proprioceptive encoding. Simultaneously, new data derived through emerging bionic neural machine–interface technologies reveal clues regarding the relative importance of kinesthetic sensory feedback and insights into the functional proprioceptive substrates that underlie natural motor behaviors.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Physiology, Volume 85 is February 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Learning the contingencies between a situational context (S), one's own responses (R), and their outcomes (O) and selecting responses according to their anticipated outcomes is the basis of a goal-directed behavior. Previous imaging studies found the angular gyrus (AG) to be correlated to both the representation of R-O associations and outcome-based response selection. Based on this correlational relationship, we investigated the causal link between AG function and goal-directed behavior in offline and online transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) experiments. To this end, we employed an experimental R-O compatibility paradigm testing outcome anticipation during response selection and S-R-O knowledge to probe S-R-O learning. In Experiment 1, we applied 1-Hz rTMS offline to the AG or the vertex before participants performed the experimental tasks. In Experiment 2, we applied online 10-Hz pulse trains to the AG or used sham stimulation during an early action selection stage in half of the trials. In both experiments, the R-O compatibility effect was unaltered when response selection was outcome-based, suggesting no causal role of the AG in outcome anticipation during response selection. However, in both experiments, groups with AG stimulation showed significantly modulated knowledge of S-R-O associations in a posttest. Additionally, in an explorative analysis, we found an induced R-O compatibility effect later in the experiment when response selection was guided by stimulus–response rules, suggesting reduced selectivity of outcome anticipation. We discuss possible compensatory behavioral and brain mechanism as well as specific TMS-related methodical considerations demonstrating important implications for further studies investigating cognitive function by means of TMS.
Der letzte Teil dieser Einführung befasst sich mit der gegenwärtigen Phänomenologie in Aktion, um von da aus der Frage nachzugehen, was tun Forschende heute, wenn sie Phänomenologie betreiben? Dabei werden folgende Anwendungen der Phänomenologie unterschieden: Im ersten Teil, Phänomenologie konkret, werden exemplarisch gegenwärtige phänomenologische Strömungen innerhalb der Philosophie vorgestellt, die sich mit konkreten gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen Gegenständen (Technik), Umständen und Problemen (Unterdrückung, Rassismus) deskriptiv und kritisch auseinandersetzen. Im zweiten Teil, Phänomenologie interdisziplinär, stehen phänomenologische Forschungen im Mittelpunkt, die a) für die Beschreibung und Bestimmung ihrer Untersuchungsgegenstände (z. B. Zeitlichkeit, Leiblichkeit) empirische Ergebnisse und Fallstudien heranziehen oder b) qualitative Forschungsmethoden in die phänomenologische Forschung integrieren. Im dritten Teil, Phänomenologie in anderen Disziplinen, geht es um den Einfluss der Phänomenologie auf andere Disziplinen, wie z. B. Psychiatrie, Soziologie, Pflegewissenschaften oder Neurowissenschaften.
Much information has been acquired on the anatomy and function of the insula over the past two decades. The insula has a dynamic cytoarchitectonic arrangement throughout its length. The anterior insula is comprised of an agranular allocortical area which functionally is part of the paralimbic belt. Its cortical connections are predominantly with other allocortical areas. Sub cortical, limbic, and brain stem connections underscore the anterior insula s role in processing and integrating autonomic and visceral information. The posterior insula is comprised of a granular isocortical area which functionally is linked to somatomotor systems. Its cortical connections are predominantly with other neocortical areas. Insular cortical and sub cortical connections, especially with the thalamus and basal ganglia, underscore the posteriorinsula s role in somatosensory, vestibular, and motor integration. The dysgranular insula lying in between the anterior and posterior insula represents an anatomical and functional transition between these regions. The predominant flow of intra insular projections from anterior to more posterior regions suggests that the posterior insula also serves as an integrative heteromodal association area for information received by all five senses. The insula plays a role in cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, vestibular, olfactory, gustatory, visual, auditory, somatosensory, and motor modulation. It is also felt to play a role in conditioned aversive learning, a ective and motivational components of pain perception, stress induced immunosuppression, mood stability, sleep, and language. Clinical correlation of damage to the insula, and the resultant impairment of the above functions is discussed.
Several recently developed philosophical approaches to the self promise to enhance
the exchange of ideas between the philosophy of the mind and the other cognitive
sciences. This review examines two important concepts of self: the ‘minimal self’, a self
devoid of temporal extension, and the ‘narrative self’, which involves personal identity
and continuity across time. The notion of a minimal self is first clarified by drawing a
distinction between the sense of self-agency and the sense of self-ownership for actions.
This distinction is then explored within the neurological domain with specific reference
to schizophrenia, in which the sense of self-agency may be disrupted. The convergence
between the philosophical debate and empirical study is extended in a discussion of
more primitive aspects of self and how these relate to neonatal experience and robotics.
The second concept of self, the narrative self, is discussed in the light of Gazzaniga’s
left-hemisphere ‘interpreter’ and episodic memory. Extensions of the idea of a narrative
self that are consistent with neurological models are then considered. The review
illustrates how the philosophical approach can inform cognitive science and suggests
that a two-way collaboration may lead to a more fully developed account of the self.
This experiment was designed to investigate the neural network engaged by the perception of human movements using positron emission tomography. Perception of meaningful and of meaningless hand actions without any purpose was contrasted with the perception of the same kind of stimuli with the goal to imitate them later. A condition that consisted of the perception of stationary hands served as a baseline level. Perception of meaningful actions and meaningless actions without any aim was associated with activation of a common set of cortical regions. In both hemispheres, the occipito-temporal junction (Ba 37/19) and the superior occipital gyrus (Ba 19) were involved. In the left hemisphere, the middle temporal gyrus (Ba 21) and the inferior parietal lobe (Ba 40) were found to be activated. These regions are interpreted as related to the analysis of hand movements. The precentral gyrus, within the area of hand representation (Ba 4), was activated in the left hemisphere. In addition to this common network, meaningful and meaningless movements engaged specific networks, respectively: meaningful actions were associated with activations mainly located in the left hemisphere in the inferior frontal gyrus (Ba 44/45) and the fusiform gyrus (Ba 38/20), whereas meaningless actions involved the dorsal pathway (inferior parietal lobe, Ba 40 and superior parietal lobule, Ba 7) bilaterally and the right cerebellum . In contrast, meaningful and meaningless actions shared almost the same network when the aim of the perception was to im itate. Activations were located in the right cerebellum and bilaterally in the dorsal pathway reaching the prem otor cortex. Additional bilateral activations were located in the SMA and in the orbitofrontal cortex during observation of meaningful actions.
We report the case of a 50-year-old man (Mr PA) who sustained a right thalamic-temporo-parietal lesion resulting in severe hemispatial neglect and somatoparaphrenic delusions in the acute phase. One month after the lesion, Mr PA's ability to recognize his own movements was systematically analysed by means of an apparatus which allowed either the patient's or the examiner's moving hand to be displayed on a single screen. When viewing the examiner's hand, the patient saw a movement which was either identical (congruent condition) or different from his own (incongruent condition). In the latter conditions, both the examiner's and the patient's hand movements were synchronized in order to have the best match in both space and time. Since both hands were covered with identical gloves, attribution judgements could be produced only by comparing an internal representation of the executed movement to the visual image presented on the screen. When moving his contralesional hand, Mr PA systematically denied being the owner of the hand displayed on the screen, regardless of whether it was his own or the examiner's. Attribution errors were very frequent, and denial of ownership was associated with confabulatory behaviour. The behaviour of Mr PA was compared to that of four normal subjects and two neglect patients. In neither group did subjects present feeling of non-belonging towards their own hand, or confabulatory behaviour. In agreement with previous reports relating abnormal activity in the right parietal cortex and misattribution of the source of an action, we suggest that the behaviour of Mr PA is a consequence of a disorder of body awareness. More precisely, we propose that in the present case, the body-reference system was defective, thus inducing the patient to refuse ownership of the hand presented on the screen, even when it was actually his own.
The desiderata for functional neuroimaging are high spatial and high temporal resolution. Recent developments in
rapid echo-planar functional resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related analyses [1,2] combine a spatial resolution
of millimetres with a temporal resolution of seconds. A fundamental trade-off remains however: large brain
coverage at high spatial resolution requires many, thin image planes (slices), resulting in a longer interscan interval (TR) and hence poorer temporal resolution. Though staggering stimulus times relative to scan times allows a higher effective sampling rate, existing volume-based analysis techniques such as SPM [2] assume simultaneous sampling of all slices. We show that this assumption can result in poor model fits and hence type II errors. Two popular solutions are compared: the use of multiple regressors and the interpolation of data in time.
Regional cerebral blood flow was measured with positron emission tomography in human subjects during the performance of a task requiring mental rotation of their hand and a perceptually equivalent control task that did not require such a process. Comparison of the distribution of cerebral activity between these conditions demonstrated significant blood flow increases in the superior parietal cortex, the intraparietal sulcus, and the adjacent rostralmost part of the inferior parietal lobule. These findings demonstrated that, in the human brain, there is a specific system of parietal areas that are involved in mental transformations of the body-in-space.
Four patients are described who presented with a paroxysmal form of the alien hand syndrome. Two patients with damage to one frontomedial cortex had brief episodes of abnormal motor behaviour of the contralateral arm that featured groping, grasping, and apparently purposeful but perseverative movements, which both patients interpreted as alien or foreign. The other two patients, with posterior parietal damage, reported a paroxysmal feeling of unawareness of the location of the contralateral arm, lack of recognition of the arm as their own, purposeless movements, and personification of the arm. These cases represent a new form of the alien hand syndrome manifested by brief, paroxysmal episodes, which may be due to ictal mechanisms.
We studied the functional anatomy of affect-laden autobiographical memory in normal volunteers. Using H 2 ¹⁵ O positron emission tomography (PET), we measured changes in relative regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). Four rCBF measurements were obtained during three conditions: REST, i.e., subjects lay at rest (for control); IMPERSONAL, i.e., subjects listened to sentences containing episodic information taken from an autobiography of a person they did not know, but which had been presented to them before PET scanning (nonautobiographical episodic memory ecphory); and PERSONAL, i.e., subjects listened to sentences containing information taken from their own past (autobiographical episodic memory ecphory).
Comparing IMPERSONAL with REST (nonautobiographical episodic memory ecphory) resulted in relative rCBF increases symmetrically in both temporal lobes including the temporal poles and medial and superior temporal gyri. The same loci, however, with a stronger lateralization to the right hemisphere were activated in the comparison PERSONAL to REST (autobiographical episodic memory ecphory). In addition, the right temporomesial, right dorsal prefrontal, right posterior cingulate areas, and the left cerebellum were activated. A comparison of PERSONAL and IMPERSONAL (autobiographical vs nonautobiographical episodic memory ecphory) demonstrated a preponderantly right hemispheric activation including primarily right temporomesial and temporolateral cortex, right posterior cingulate areas, right insula, and right prefrontal areas. The right temporomesial activation included hippocampus, parahippocampus, and amygdala.
These results suggest that a right hemispheric network of temporal, together with posterior, cingulate, and prefrontal, areas is engaged in the ecphory of affect-laden autobiographical information.
Schizophrenic patients experiencing passivity phenomena believe their thoughts and actions to be those of external, or alien, entities. We wished to test the hypothesis that voluntary motor action in such patients would be associated with aberrant patterns of activation within the cerebral motor system. We used H2(15)O PET to study patients while they performed paced joystick movements on two occasions 4-6 weeks apart. During the first scan passivity symptoms were maximal, while by the second scan these symptoms had significantly improved in five of the seven patients. Two control groups were also scanned on two occasions: deluded schizophrenic patients without passivity phenomena and normal subjects. In normal subjects, performance of freely selected joystick movements with the right hand, compared with rest, revealed relative activation of prefrontal, premotor, motor and parietal cortical regions. Schizophrenic patients with passivity showed hyperactivation of parietal and cingulate cortices. This hyperactivation remitted in those subjects in whom passivity decreased over time. This reversible hyperactivity was not a feature of schizophrenics without passivity. Given that these hyperactive cerebral regions subserve attention to internal and external bodily space, and the attribution of significance to sensory information, they provide a plausible anatomical substrate for the misattribution of internally generated acts to external entities: the cardinal feature of delusions of passivity (alien control).
A self-produced tactile stimulus is perceived as less ticklish than the same stimulus generated externally. We used fMRI to examine neural responses when subjects experienced a tactile stimulus that was either self-produced or externally produced. More activity was found in somatosensory cortex when the stimulus was externally produced. In the cerebellum, less activity was associated with a movement that generated a tactile stimulus than with a movement that did not. This difference suggests that the cerebellum is involved in predicting the specific sensory consequences of movements, providing the signal that is used to cancel the sensory response to self-generated stimulation.
The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualization of posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and callosal-frontal counterparts.
Several recently developed philosophical approaches to the self promise to enhance the exchange of ideas between the philosophy of the mind and the other cognitive sciences. This review examines two important concepts of self: the 'minimal self', a self devoid of temporal extension, and the 'narrative self', which involves personal identity and continuity across time. The notion of a minimal self is first clarified by drawing a distinction between the sense of self-agency and the sense of self-ownership for actions. This distinction is then explored within the neurological domain with specific reference to schizophrenia, in which the sense of self-agency may be disrupted. The convergence between the philosophical debate and empirical study is extended in a discussion of more primitive aspects of self and how these relate to neonatal experience and robotics. The second concept of self, the narrative self, is discussed in the light of Gazzaniga's left-hemisphere 'interpreter' and episodic memory. Extensions of the idea of a narrative self that are consistent with neurological models are then considered. The review illustrates how the philosophical approach can inform cognitive science and suggests that a two-way collaboration may lead to a more fully developed account of the self.
The goal of this study was to assess brain glucose metabolism and its relationship to dissociation measures and clinical symptoms in DSM-IV depersonalization disorder.
Positron emission tomography scans coregistered with magnetic resonance images of eight subjects with depersonalization disorder were compared to those of 24 healthy comparison subjects. The two groups did not differ in age, sex, education, performance on a baseline neuropsychological battery, or performance on a verbal learning task administered during [(18)F]fluorodeoxyglucose uptake. A cortical analysis by individual Brodmann's areas was performed.
Compared to the healthy subjects, subjects with depersonalization disorder showed significantly lower metabolic activity in right Brodmann's areas 22 and 21 of the superior and middle temporal gyri and had significantly higher metabolism in parietal Brodmann's areas 7B and 39 and left occipital Brodmann's area 19. Dissociation and depersonalization scores among the subjects with depersonalization disorder were significantly positively correlated with metabolic activity in area 7B.
Depersonalization appears to be associated with functional abnormalities along sequential hierarchical areas, secondary and cross-modal, of the sensory cortex (visual, auditory, and somatosensory), as well as areas responsible for an integrated body schema. These findings are in good agreement with the phenomenological conceptualization of depersonalization as a dissociation of perceptions as well as with the subjective symptoms of depersonalization disorder.
Perspective taking is an essential component in the mechanisms that account for intersubjectivity and agency. Mental simulation of action can be used as a natural protocol to explore the cognitive and neural processing involved in agency. Here we took PET measurements while subjects simulated actions with either a first-person or a third-person perspective. Both conditions were associated with common activation in the SMA, the precentral gyrus, the precuneus and the MT/V5 complex. When compared to the first-person perspective, the third-person perspective recruited right inferior parietal, precuneus, posterior cingulate and frontopolar cortex. The opposite contrast revealed activation in left inferior parietal and somatosensory cortex. We suggest that the right inferior parietal, precuneus and somatosensory cortex are specifically involved in distinguishing self-produced actions from those generated by others.
Visual and auditory motion information can be used together to provide complementary information about the movement of objects. To investigate the neural substrates of such cross-modal integration, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess brain activation while subjects performed separate visual and auditory motion discrimination tasks. Areas of unimodal activation included the primary and/or early sensory cortex for each modality plus additional sites extending toward parietal cortex. Areas conjointly activated by both tasks included lateral parietal cortex, lateral frontal cortex, anterior midline and anterior insular cortex. The parietal site encompassed distinct, but partially overlapping, zones of activation in or near the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). A subsequent task requiring an explicit cross-modal speed comparison revealed several foci of enhanced activity relative to the unimodal tasks. These included the IPS, anterior midline, and anterior insula but not frontal cortex. During the unimodal auditory motion task, portions of the dorsal visual motion system showed signals depressed below resting baseline. Thus, interactions between the two systems involved either enhancement or suppression depending on the stimuli present and the nature of the perceptual task. Together, these results identify human cortical regions involved in polysensory integration and the attentional selection of cross-modal motion information.
Schizophrenic patients experiencing passivity phenomena believe their thoughts and actions to be those of external, or alien, entities. We wished to test the hypothesis that voluntary motor action in such patients would be associated with aberrant patterns of activation within the cerebral motor system. We used H2(15)O PET to study patients while they performed paced joystick movements on two occasions 4-6 weeks apart. During the first scan passivity symptoms were maximal, while by the second scan these symptoms had significantly improved in five of the seven patients. Two control groups were also scanned on two occasions: deluded schizophrenic patients without passivity phenomena and normal subjects. In normal subjects, performance of freely selected joystick movements with the right hand, compared with rest, revealed relative activation of prefrontal, premotor, motor and parietal cortical regions. Schizophrenic patients with passivity showed hyperactivation of parietal and cingulate cortices. This hyperactivation remitted in those subjects in whom passivity decreased over time. This reversible hyperactivity was not a feature of schizophrenics without passivity. Given that these hyperactive cerebral regions subserve attention to internal and external bodily space, and the attribution of significance to sensory information, they provide a plausible anatomical substrate for the misattribution of internally generated acts to external entities: the cardinal feature of delusions of passivity (alien control).
This paper concerns the spatial and intensity transformations that map one image onto another. We present a general technique that facilitates nonlinear spatial (stereotactic) normalization and image realignment. This technique minimizes the sum of squares between two images following nonlinear spatial deformations and transformations of the voxel (intensity) values. The spatial and intensity transformations are obtained simultaneously, and explicitly, using a least squares solution and a series of linearising devices. The approach is completely noninteractive (automatic), nonlinear, and noniterative. It can be applied in any number of dimensions.
Various applications are considered, including the realignment of functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) time-series, the linear (affine) and nonlinear spatial normalization of positron emission tomography (PET) and structural MRI images, the coregistration of PET to structural MRI, and, implicitly, the conjoining of PET and MRI to obtain high resolution functional images.
Three-dimensional MRI imaging techniques offer new possibilities for qualitative and quantitative studies of gross neuroanatomy, functional neuroanatomy and for neurosurgical planning. The digital nature of the data allows for the reconstruction of realistic three-dimensional models of an individual brain which can be sliced at arbitrary orientations for optimal visual inspection of often complex neuroanatomy and pathology. This is particularly relevant in the assessment of potential neuroanatomical correlates of temporal lobe epilepsy. Re-formatting of contiguous thinly sliced (1–2 mm thick) volumetric MRI data along planes parallel and perpendicular to the temporal plane allow finer visual discrimination and greater standardisation in qualitative procedures than previously possible. Perhaps more exciting are the applications of quantitative analysis where, for instance, accurate measurements of hippocampus and/or amygdala volumes provide important indicators of unilateral mesial temporal sclerosis which compare favourably with EEG and more invasive methods of lateralising the epileptogenic focus (Jack et al., 1990; Cascino et al., 1991; Watson et al, 1992; Cendes et al., 1993 a,b). For instance, by combining volumetric measurements of both hippocampus and amygdala, Cendes et al., (Chapter 9) quote correct lateralisation of focus in 93 of 100 temporal lobe epilepsy cases. The study of epilepsy arising from cortical abnormalities has been limited in the past by the difficulties of visualising the cortical surface from a set of conventional two-dimensional MRI slices. New acquisition techniques with gradient echo as opposed to spin echo techniques allow for an improved signal-to-noise ratio in thin slices in times compatible with clinical examinations. Whole brain coverage with thin slice data is now possible, such that partial volume effects are minimised with consequent improvements in fine detail. Numerous authors have reported dramatic improvements in the assessment of cortical dysplasia and grey matter heterotopias, particularly for more subtle abnormalities (Palmini et al., 1991a,b,c; Barkovich and Kjos, 1992a,b,c). The impact of this improved raw data when combined with new techniques for generating three-dimensional surface renderings in reasonably interactive circumstances is yet to be fully realised but initial experience is promising. At present, most studies have relied upon visual inspection to identify abnormalities in gyration on three-dimensional surface-rendered MRI. Such methods are quite acceptable for gross pathologies but, in a manner similar to mesial temporal volumetrics, the identification of more subtle distortions may require quantitative analysis of left/right differences and comparison of individual gyral surface area or gyral/sulcal locations with previously established population norms. Cook et al., (Chapter 47) have approached the problem by application of fractal analysis to two-dimensional MRI images from normal and frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) patients. The grey-white matter interface was extracted by image processing procedures as a continuous contour and the fractal dimension, an index of contour complexity, derived. Results indicate that 10 of 16 FLE patients had a fractal index more than 3 standard deviations (3SD) below normal. In its present form, the method provides a non-specific indicator of cortical abnormality, yielding an overall index of complexity rather than identifying specific abnormalities, and is implemented in two dimensions rather than three dimensions. Nevertheless, it illustrates the potential of quantitative analysis for detecting aberrant cortical morphology. For a more directed analysis of cortical folding, a model of normal neuroanatomical variability, expressed in three-dimensional coordinates, is necessary. Keyserlingk and co-workers have developed methods for digitising sulcal patterns from post-mortem brains and constructed a map, with cuboid elements of 4 mm or 8 mm edge length, of major sulcal anatomy from 30 such brains (Keyserlingk et al., 1983, 1985, 1988; Niemann et al, 1988). The advent of high resolution MRI scanning offers finer spatial and contrast resolution in normal brain in vivo. At the Montreal Neurological Institute, MRI and PET imaging techniques are combined with three-dimensional graphics and computational analysis in the study of functional neuroanatomy of cognitive and sensorimotor processing. As part of this “brain mapping” programme, we have collected a database of over 300 MRI volumes from young normal subjects and are presently engaged in a series of projects whose long-term goal is the construction of a probabilistic description of normal neuroanatomy derived from high-resolution (1 mm thick slices) MRI data. In this chapter we briefly describe the current brain mapping environment at our institute and the current development of the MRI atlas project in both volumetric and surface domains.
In this review; a description is offered of the way actions are represented, how these representations are built, and how their content can be accessed by the agent and by other agents. Such a description will appear critical for understanding how an action is attributed to its proper origin, or, in other words, how a subject can make a conscious judgement about who the agent of that action is (an agency judgement). This question is central to the problem of self-consciousness: Action is one of the main channels used for communication between individuals, so that determining the agent of an action contributes to differentiating the self from others.
three types of disturbance of the body schema will be considered in this chapter: autotopagnosia, finger agnosia, and right–left disorientation (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This book [reviews] cognitive neuroscience studies of the representation for actions. The fundamental question addressed concerns the nature and role of different representations in the planning and execution of movements. Adopting a cognitive neuroscience approach to this question generates a new perspective and some challenging hypotheses.
The book explores in detail the contribution of the brain structures, particularly the cerebral cortex, to the various aspects of movement preparation and execution. In so doing, the author discusses a wide range of evidence, including the study of anatomical connections between areas, the recording of single neuron activity in animals, and brain stimulation and imaging studies in human Ss. This neuroscience evidence is related to both behavioral experiments in normal Ss and clinical observations in brain-lesioned Ss, resulting in provocative hypotheses about the cognitive structure of central representations and processes which subserve actions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Statistical parametric maps are spatially extended statistical processes that are used to test hypotheses about regionally specific effects in neuroimaging data. The most established sorts of statistical parametric maps (e.g., Friston et al. [1991]: J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 11:690–699; Worsley et al. [1992]: J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 12:900–918) are based on linear models, for example ANCOVA, correlation coefficients and t tests. In the sense that these examples are all special cases of the general linear model it should be possible to implement them (and many others) within a unified framework. We present here a general approach that accomodates most forms of experimental layout and ensuing analysis (designed experiments with fixed effects for factors, covariates and interaction of factors). This approach brings together two well established bodies of theory (the general linear model and the theory of Gaussian fields) to provide a complete and simple framework for the analysis of imaging data.
The importance of this framework is twofold: (i) Conceptual and mathematical simplicity, in that the same small number of operational equations is used irrespective of the complexity of the experiment or nature of the statistical model and (ii) the generality of the framework provides for great latitude in experimental design and analysis.
The ipsilateral corticocortical connections of the somatosensory fields of the lateral sulcus of macaques were examined with both anterograde and retrograde axonal transport methods. In most cases, the field of interest was identified prior to the injection of the tracer substance by recording neuronal responses to somatic stimulation.
The results show that the second somatosensory area (S2) is reciprocally connected with the retroinsular area (Ri), area 7b, and the granular (Ig) and dysgranular (Id) insular fields. Ri is also reciprocally connected with Ig. Previously reported connections were confirmed between S2 and areas 3a, 3b, 1, and 2 and between area 5 and both area 7 and Ri. Moreover, the portions of Ig and Id that receive somatic inputs were shown to project to the amygdaloid complex. Id projects, in addition, to the perirhinal cortex, which supplies input to the hippocampal formation.
The corticocortical projections were found to have two distinct laminar patterns of termination. One is characterized by heavy terminations in layers IV and IIIb and the other by heavy terminations in layer I, but no terminations in layers IV and IIIb. These two patterns were typically found to be reciprocally related.
The results suggest that somatosensory information is processed by a series of cortical fields, including areas 3a, 3b, 1, 2, 5, 7b, S2, Ig, and Id. These fields have access to the amygdaloid complex and the hippocampal formation. Thus, a ventrally directed tactile processing pathway can be followed from S1 to the temporal lobe limbic structures via relays in S2 and the insula; this corticolimbic pathway may subserve tactile learning and memory.
The cortex of the inferior parietal lobule in primates is important for spatial perception and spatially oriented behavior.
Recordings of single neurons in this area in behaving monkeys showed that the visual sensitivity of the retinotopic receptive
fields changes systematically with the angle of gaze. The activity of many of the neurons can be largely described by the
product of a gain factor that is a function of the eye position and the response profile of the visual receptive field. This
operation produces an eye position-dependent tuning for locations in head-centered coordinate space.
A patient with a severe organic schizophreniform illness is described in whom the bizarre psychotic features were related to a non-dominant parietal lobe lesion. This case is a severe and unusual form of the neuro-psychiatric disorder, somatoparaphrenia. The relationship of this condition to other disorders of parietal lobe function is discussed.
Response properties of neurons in the monkey's granular insula (Ig) were examined with somatic, auditory, visual, and gustatory stimuli. Results indicate that a major portion of Ig is a somatic processing area exclusively, with units that have large and often bilateral receptive fields, consistent with the view that this area serves as a higher-order, modality-specific link in the somatosensory-limbic pathway.
Despite its documented connections with many limbic structures, the role of the insula in the etiology of partial seizures is poorly understood. Two patients are described in whom lesions of the insula were associated with intractable partial seizures. In the first patient, the seizures involved visceral sensory hallucinations followed by motor automatism. Seizures in the second patient began with somatic sensory hallucinations and then produced visceral motor effects. Both patients were found to have low-grade astrocytomas of the insula. In both instances, resection of the lesion and adjacent insular cortex resulted in a cure of the seizures. These cases are placed within the context of the existing literature on the subject.
The neural correlates of verbal self-monitoring were examined by measuring the response to alterations in auditory verbal feedback while subjects read aloud. Six normal subjects were studied with PET, using H2(15)O as a tracer of regional CBF. There was no difference between the temporal cortical response to reading aloud (and hearing one's own speech) and reading silently while hearing the words spoken by someone else. Distortion of subjects' speech (by pitch elevation) while they read aloud led to a bilateral activation of lateral temporal cortex, with a greater response on the right side than the left. A similar pattern of activation was evident when subjects read aloud, but the words they heard were spoken by someone else. These data suggest that (i) self-and externally generated speech are processed in similar regions of temporal cortex, and (ii) the monitoring of self-generated speech involves the temporal cortex bilaterally, in areas associated with the processing of speech which has been generated externally.
This paper offers a framework for consciousness of internal reality. Recent PET experiments are reviewed, showing partial overlap of cortical activation during self-produced actions and actions observed from other people. This overlap suggests that representations for actions may be shared by several individuals, a situation which creates a potential problem for correctly attributing an action to its agent. The neural conditions for correct agency judgments are thus assigned a key role in self/other distinction and self-consciousness. A series of behavioral experiments that demonstrate, in normal subjects, the poor monitoring of action-related signals and the difficulty in recognizing self-produced actions are described. In patients presenting delusions, this difficulty dramatically increases and actions become systematically misattributed. These results point to schizophrenia and related disorders as a paradigmatic alteration of a "Who?" system for self-consciousness.
In this review, a description is offered of the way actions are represented, how these representations are built, and how their content can be accessed by the agent and by other agents. Such a description will appear critical for understanding how an action is attributed to its proper origin, or, in other words, how a subject can make a conscious judgement about who the agent of that action is (an agency judgement). This question is central to the problem of self-consciousness: Action is one of the main channels used for communication between individuals, so that determining the agent of an action contributes to differentiating the self from others.
The left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area) is generally believed to be critical for the motor act of speech. A lesion-based analysis has, however, shown that the left anterior insula is necessary for accurate articulation. We used functional imaging in normal people to show the neural systems involved in speech during different speech tasks.
12 normal people underwent positron emission tomography with oxygen-15-labelled water as tracer. We measured cerebral activity while participants performed three different tasks: repetition of heard nouns at different rates; listening to single nouns at different rates; and anticipation of listening or repetition. We analysed the data with imaging software.
Repetition of single words did not activate Broca's area but activity in three left-lateralised regions was seen: the anterior insula, a localised region in the lateral premotor cortex, and the posterior pallidum. The left anterior insula and lateral premotor cortex showed a conjunction of activity for hearing and articulation. In addition, articulation modulated the response to hearing words in the left dorsolateral temporal cortex, the physiological expression of the speaker's auditory attention being directed towards the stimuli and not his or her articulated responses.
The formulation of an articulatory plan is a function of the left anterior insula and lateral premotor cortex and not of Broca's area. The left basal ganglia seem to be dominant for speech, although the axial muscles involved receive their motor output from both cerebral hemispheres.
We studied the neural correlates of self vs. non-self judgements using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Individually tailored faces and personality trait words were used as stimuli in three experiments (exp.). In the first two experiments, brain activation was measured while subjects viewed morphed versions of either their own (self face exp.) or their partner's face (partner's face exp.), alternating in blocks with presentation of an unknown face. In the self face exp. right limbic areas (hippocampal formation, insula, anterior cingulate), the right middle temporal lobe, left inferior parietal and left prefrontal regions showed signal changes. In the partner's face exp., only the right insula was activated. In the third exp., subjects made decisions about psychological trait adjectives previously categorized as describing their own attributes. Activation was present in the precuneus, the left parietal lobe, left insula/inferior frontal gyrus and the left anterior cingulate. A reaction time advantage was present when subjects responded to self-relevant words. The main area with signal changes during self-reference processing, regardless of the type of stimulus, was the left fusiform gyrus. The self-relevant stimuli engaged to a differential extent long term and working memory, semantic and emotional processes. We suggest that regions activated by these stimuli are engaged in self-processing.
Visual and auditory motion information can be used together to provide complementary information about the movement of objects. To investigate the neural substrates of such cross-modal integration, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess brain activation while subjects performed separate visual and auditory motion discrimination tasks. Areas of unimodal activation included the primary and/or early sensory cortex for each modality plus additional sites extending toward parietal cortex. Areas conjointly activated by both tasks included lateral parietal cortex, lateral frontal cortex, anterior midline and anterior insular cortex. The parietal site encompassed distinct, but partially overlapping, zones of activation in or near the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). A subsequent task requiring an explicit cross-modal speed comparison revealed several foci of enhanced activity relative to the unimodal tasks. These included the IPS, anterior midline, and anterior insula but not frontal cortex. During the unimodal auditory motion task, portions of the dorsal visual motion system showed signals depressed below resting baseline. Thus, interactions between the two systems involved either enhancement or suppression depending on the stimuli present and the nature of the perceptual task. Together, these results identify human cortical regions involved in polysensory integration and the attentional selection of cross-modal motion information.
We report two studies of facial self-perception using individually tailored, standardized facial photographs of a group of volunteers and their partners. A computerized morphing procedure was used to merge each target face with an unknown control face. In the first set of experiments, a discrimination task revealed a delayed response time for the more extensively morphed self-face stimuli. In a second set of experiments, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activation while subjects viewed morphed versions of either their own or their partner's face, alternating in blocks with presentation of an unknown face. When subjects viewed themselves (minus activation for viewing an unknown face), increased blood oxygenation was detected in right limbic (hippocampal formation, insula, anterior cingulate), left prefrontal cortex and superior temporal cortex. In the partner (versus unknown) experiment, only the right insula was activated. We suggest that a neural network involving the right hemisphere in conjunction with left-sided associative and executive regions underlies the process of visual self-recognition. Together, this combination produces the unique experience of self-awareness.
Somatoparaphrenia: A case report Surgical treatment of partial epilepsy arising from the insular cortex Report of two cases Effect of subjective perspective taking during simulation of action: A PET investigation of agency
- S Nightingale
- S N Roper
- M F Levesque
- W W Sutherling
- E Ngel
- J Ruby
- P Decety
Nightingale, S. 1982. Somatoparaphrenia: A case report. Cortex 18: 463–467. Roper, S. N., Levesque, M. F., Sutherling, W. W., and E ngel, J ., J r. 1993. Surgical treatment of partial epilepsy arising from the insular cortex. Report of two cases. J . Neurosurg. 79: 266– 269. Ruby, P., and Decety, J . 2001. Effect of subjective perspective taking during simulation of action: A PET investigation of agency. Nat
To act or not to act: Perspectives on the representation of actions
- Jeannerod
J eannerod, M. 1999. To act or not to act: Perspectives on the repre-sentation of actions. Q. J . Exp. Psychol. 52A: 1–29
The Parietal Lobes The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness
- M R Critchley
Critchley, M. 1953. The Parietal Lobes. Hafner Press, New York.
Damasio, A. R. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and
Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Harcourt Brace, New
York.
Anatomy of the insula—Functional and clinical correlates
- Flynn
Functional neuroanatomy of verbal self-monitoring
- McGuire
A modality-specific somatosensory area within the insula of the rhesus monkey
- Schneider