Visuomotor conflicts that reduce the sense of agency—the feeling of controlling one's actions—are linked to increased alpha- and theta-band brain activity. In an EEG study using virtual reality, participants moved a finger while viewing a virtual hand that either matched their movement, differed anatomically (same movement, different finger), or spatially (same finger, shifted angle). Conflicts robustly decreased self-attribution. Altered trials could be decoded from unaltered ones with up to 68% accuracy starting around 200 milliseconds after movement onset. Cross-decoding revealed shared neural patterns across conflict types emerging around 500 milliseconds, suggesting a temporal progression from early, condition-specific sensorimotor responses to a later domain-general component, consistent with a two-step model of agency.
A reduction in the sense of agency—the feeling of being in control of one's own actions—is linked to decreased attenuation in the alpha frequency band and increased power in the theta frequency band of brain activity. Using electroencephalography and a virtual reality paradigm where visual feedback of a finger movement was altered, trials with sensorimotor alterations could be decoded from brain signals with up to 68% accuracy starting around 200 milliseconds after movement onset. Cross-decoding analyses revealed similar neural patterns for reduced agency in both anatomical and spatial alteration conditions starting around 500 milliseconds. These findings support a two-level formation of the sense of agency: an early, domain-specific implicit component and a later, domain-general explicit component.