Sense of Agency Beyond Sensorimotor Process: Decoding Self-Other Action Attribution in the Human Brain
Ryu Ohata, T. Asai, Hiroshi Kadota, H. Shigemasu, Kenji Ogawa, H. Imamizu
Cerebral Cortex March 3, 2020 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa028 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Experimental neuroimaging study Peer reviewed |
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| Key findings | The authors report that self-other attribution during movement is represented across sensorimotor, posterior parietal, anterior insula, and higher visual cortices, with the right supramarginal gyrus most sensitive to self-other attribution and the bilateral precentral gyri and left inferior parietal lobe mainly reflecting sensorimotor information. They conclude that multiple brain regions contribute to the sense of agency and show distinct preferences for different levels of information. |
Abstract
Abstract The sense of agency is defined as the subjective experience that “I” am the one who is causing the action. Theoretical studies postulate that this subjective experience is developed through multistep processes extending from the sensorimotor to the cognitive level. However, it remains unclear how the brain processes such different levels of information and constitutes the neural substrates for the sense of agency. To answer this question, we combined two strategies: an experimental paradigm, in which self-agency gradually evolves according to sensorimotor experience, and a multivoxel pattern analysis. The combined strategies revealed that the sensorimotor, posterior parietal, anterior insula, and higher visual cortices contained information on self-other attribution during movement. In addition, we investigated whether the found regions showed a preference for self-other attribution or for sensorimotor information. As a result, the right supramarginal gyrus, a portion of the inferior parietal lobe (IPL), was found to be the most sensitive to self-other attribution among the found regions, while the bilateral precentral gyri and left IPL dominantly reflected sensorimotor information. Our results demonstrate that multiple brain regions are involved in the development of the sense of agency and that these show specific preferences for different levels of information.