The complex nature of agency attribution: Neurophysiological signatures associated to monitoring self vs. external erroneous actions
iScience July 20, 2026 Alba Gómez-Andrés, Toni Cunillera, David Cucurell et al.
Across three event-related potential experiments with healthy participants, this work characterizes the brain's electrophysiological and oscillatory responses to agency prediction errors—mismatches between expected and actual action outcomes. Incongruent hand movements (content errors) elicited parietal P600-delta activity, associated with attributing agency to an external source and updating predictive mental models. Temporal errors from delayed outcomes (400 ms) reduced internal agency attribution and triggered feedback-related potentials (FCRP, FRN), reflecting uncertainty and error monitoring. These findings may clarify neural mechanisms underlying disrupted agency in pathological conditions and the experience of 'mineness'.