scholarly journals Sensory attenuation in the absence of movement: differentiating motor action from sense of agency

Cortex ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Han ◽  
Bradley N. Jack ◽  
Gethin Hughes ◽  
Ruth B. Elijah ◽  
Thomas J. Whitford
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Motor Action ◽  
Sensory Attenuation

EXPRESS: Behavioral evidence of altered sensory attenuation in obesity

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110657
Author(s):  
Federica Scarpina ◽  
Carlotta Fossataro ◽  
Alice Rossi Sebastiano ◽  
Francesca Bruni ◽  
Massimo Scacchi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Healthy Weight ◽  
Attenuation Effect ◽  
Tactile Stimuli ◽  
Control Framework ◽  
Sensory Attenuation ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
Conscious Belief

Body ownership (i.e., the conscious belief of owning a body) and sense of agency (i.e., being the agent of one’s own movements) are part of a pre-reflective experience of bodily self, which grounds on low-level complex sensory–motor processes. While previous literature had already investigated body ownership in obesity, sense of agency was never explored. Here, we exploited the sensory attenuation effect (i.e., an implicit marker of the sense of agency; SA effect) to investigate whether the sense of agency was altered in a sample of eighteen individuals affected by obesity as compared with eighteen healthy-weight individuals. In our experiment, participants were asked to rate the perceived intensity of self-generated and other-generated tactile stimuli. Healthy-weight individuals showed a significantly greater SA effect than participants affected by obesity. Indeed, while healthy-weight participants perceived self-generated stimuli as significantly less intense as compared to externally generated ones, this difference between stimuli was not reported by affected participants. Our results relative to the SA effect pinpointed an altered sense of agency in obesity. We discussed this finding within the motor control framework with reference to obesity. We encouraged future research to further explore such effect and its role in shaping the clinical features of obesity.

scholarly journals Sense of Agency in Multi-Step Actions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Garrido-Vásquez ◽  
Tanja Rock
Keyword(s):  
Present Experiment ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Implicit Measure ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Perception Of Causality ◽  
Sensory Effects ◽  
One Step ◽  
Sensory Attenuation ◽  
The One

In our daily lives, we frequently execute actions that require several steps to bring about the outcome. However, investigations on how the sense of agency—the sense of controlling our actions and their outcomes—evolves in multi-step actions are still lacking. The purpose of the present research is to fill this gap. In the present study, the participants executed one-step, two-step, and three-step actions in which one, two, or three keys had to be pressed consecutively to generate a tone. We used sensory attenuation as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. Sensory attenuation means that self-produced sensory effects are perceived as less intense than externally generated effects. In the present experiment, sensory attenuation was measured in a psychophysical paradigm and increased in multi-step actions compared to the one-step action. We also asked the participants to explicitly rate the amount to which they felt that they had generated the tone. Ratings were highest in the one-step condition and dropped for multi-step actions, thus showing the opposite pattern of the sensory attenuation data. We assume that enhanced sensory attenuation in multi-step actions could be due to increased effort or more accurate sensorimotor predictions of action effects. The decrease in explicit ratings for multi-step actions might be attributed to reduced perception of causality.

scholarly journals Choosing, Doing, and Controlling: Implicit Sense of Agency Over Somatosensory Events

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 882-893 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khatereh Borhani ◽  
Brianna Beck ◽  
Patrick Haggard
Keyword(s):  
Stimulus Intensity ◽  
High Intensity ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Passive Movement ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Active Movement ◽  
Implicit Measures ◽  
Temporal Binding ◽  
Sensory Attenuation ◽  
Instrumental Control

Sense of agency—a feeling of control over one’s actions and their outcomes—might include at least two components: free choice over which outcome to pursue and motoric control over the action causing the outcome. We orthogonally manipulated locus of outcome choice (free or instructed choice) and motoric control (active or passive movement), while measuring the perceived temporal attraction between actions and outcomes ( temporal binding) as an implicit marker of agency. Participants also rated stimulus intensity so that we could measure sensory attenuation, another possible implicit marker of agency. Actions caused higher or lower levels of either painful heat or mild electrotactile stimulation. We found that both motoric control and outcome choice contributed to outcome binding. Moreover, free choice, relative to instructed choice, attenuated the perceived magnitude of high-intensity outcomes, but only when participants made an active movement. Thus, choosing, not just doing, influences temporal binding and sensory attenuation, though in different ways. Our results show that these implicit measures of agency are sensitive to both voluntary motor commands and instrumental control over action outcomes.

Reaction Time and Brain Waves in Omitted Stimulus Tasks

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar H. Hernández ◽  
Muriel Vogel-Sprott
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Auditory Stimuli ◽  
Motor Action ◽  
Cognitive Component ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Two Measures ◽  
Somatosensory Stimuli

A missing stimulus task requires an immediate response to the omission of a regular recurrent stimulus. The task evokes a subclass of event-related potential known as omitted stimulus potential (OSP), which reflects some cognitive processes such as expectancy. The behavioral response to a missing stimulus is referred to as omitted stimulus reaction time (RT). This total RT measure is known to include cognitive and motor components. The cognitive component (premotor RT) is measured by the time from the missing stimulus until the onset of motor action. The motor RT component is measured by the time from the onset of muscle action until the completion of the response. Previous research showed that RT is faster to auditory than to visual stimuli, and that the premotor of RT to a missing auditory stimulus is correlated with the duration of an OSP. Although this observation suggests that similar cognitive processes might underlie these two measures, no research has tested this possibility. If similar cognitive processes are involved in the premotor RT and OSP duration, these two measures should be correlated in visual and somatosensory modalities, and the premotor RT to missing auditory stimuli should be fastest. This hypothesis was tested in 17 young male volunteers who performed a missing stimulus task, who were presented with trains of auditory, visual, and somatosensory stimuli and the OSP and RT measures were recorded. The results showed that premotor RT and OSP duration were consistently related, and that both measures were shorter with respect to auditory stimuli than to visual or somatosensory stimuli. This provides the first evidence that the premotor RT is related to an attribute of the OSP in all three sensory modalities.

Agency and Insanity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Garvey
Keyword(s):  
Agency Theory ◽  
Mental Disease ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Traditional Theory ◽  
Alien Hand Syndrome ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Alien Hand ◽  
Title Character

66 Buffalo Law Review 123 (2018)This Article offers an unorthodox theory of insanity. According to the traditional theory, insanity is a cognitive or volitional incapacity arising from a mental disease or defect. As an alternative to the traditional theory, some commentators have proposed that insanity is an especially debilitating form of irrationality. Each of these theories faces fair-minded objections. In contrast to these theories, this Article proposes that a person is insane if and because he lacks a sense of agency. The theory of insanity it defends might therefore be called the lost-agency theory.According to the lost-agency theory, a person lacks a sense of agency when he experiences his mind and body moving but doesn’t experience himself as the author or agent of those movements. The title character in the movie Dr. Strangelove suffered from what’s known as alien hand syndrome. People suffering from this syndrome experience the moving hand as their hand but don’t experience themselves as the author or agent of its movements. The lost-agency theory portrays insanity as alien hand syndrome writ large. The insane actor is like someone possessed by an alien self. He’s not in charge of his mind or body when he commits the crime.

Measuring Agency Change Across the Domain of Hypnosis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vince Polito ◽  
Amanda Barnier ◽  
Erik Woody
Keyword(s):  
Rating Scale ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Pass Rates ◽  
Current Experiment ◽  
Multidimensional Construct ◽  
Time Points ◽  
Hypnotic Induction ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Postexperimental Inquiry

Building on Hilgard’s (1965) classic work, the domain of hypnosis has been conceptualised by Barnier, Dienes, and Mitchell (2008) as comprising three levels: (1) classic hypnotic items, (2) responding between and within items, and (3) state and trait. The current experiment investigates sense of agency across each of these three levels. Forty-six high hypnotisable participants completed an ideomotor (arm levitation), a challenge (arm rigidity) and a cognitive (anosmia) item either following a hypnotic induction (hypnosis condition) or without a hypnotic induction (wake condition). In a postexperimental inquiry, participants rated their feelings of control at three time points for each item: during the suggestion, test and cancellation phases. They also completed the Sense of Agency Rating Scale (Polito, Barnier, & Woody, 2013) for each item. Pass rates, control ratings, and agency scores fluctuated across the different types of items and for the three phases of each item; also, control ratings and agency scores often differed across participants who passed versus failed each item. Interestingly, whereas a hypnotic induction influenced the likelihood of passing items, it had no direct effect on agentive experiences. These results suggest that altered sense of agency is not a unidimensional or static quality “switched on” by hypnotic induction, but a dynamic multidimensional construct that varies across items, over time and according to whether individuals pass or fail suggestions.

Extended Emulation Theory

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Rade
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Weak Form ◽  
External Input ◽  
Motor Action ◽  
Abstract Thought ◽  
Thought Patterns ◽  
Stored Information ◽  
Short Term Prediction ◽  
The Mind

Emulators are internal models, first evolved for prediction in perception to shorten the feedback on motor action. However, the selective pressure on perception is to improve the fitness of decision-making, driving the evolution of emulators towards context-dependent payoff representation and integration of action planning, not enhanced prediction as is generally assumed. The result is integrated perceptual, memory, representational, and imaginative capacities processing external input and stored internal input for decision-making, while simultaneously updating stored information. Perception, recall, imagination, theory of mind, and dreaming are the same process with different inputs. Learning proceeds via scaffolding on existing conceptual infrastructure, a weak form of embodied cognition. Discrete concepts are emergent from continuous dynamics and are in a perceptual, not representational, format. Language is also in perceptual format and enables precise abstract thought. In sum, what was initially a primitive system for short-term prediction in perception has evolved to perform abstract thought, store and retrieve memory, understand others, hold embedded action plans, build stable narratives, simulate scenarios, and integrate context dependence into perception. Crucially, emulators co-evolved with the emergence of societies, producing a mind-society system in which emulators are dysfunctional unless integrated into a society, which enables their complexity. The Target Emulator System, evolved initially for honest signaling, produces the emergent dynamics of the mind-society system and spreads variation-testing of behavior and thought patterns across a population. The human brain is the most dysfunctional in isolation, but the most effective given its context.

The Origins of Intentional Agency

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorijn Zaadnoordijk ◽  
Tim Bayne
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Theory ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Intentional Agency ◽  
Human Adults ◽  
Intentional Agents

As human adults, we experience ourselves as intentional agents. Here, we address how intentional agency and the corresponding agentive experiences emerge in infancy. When formulating a developmental theory of intentional agency, we encounter a so-called paradox of agency: three plausible theses regarding intentional agency that in combination seem to make it impossible for the developing infant to acquire a sense of agency. By recognizing various types of intentions, we propose a framework in which the paradox can be resolved, allowing infants to bootstrap their way to becoming intentional agents and experiencing a sense of agency.

scholarly journals From Conflict to Socio-Emotional Well-Being. Application of the GIAM Model through Traditional Sporting Games

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7263
Author(s):  
Aaron Rillo-Albert ◽  
Unai Sáez de Sáez de Ocáriz ◽  
Antoni Costes ◽  
Pere Lavega-Burgués
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Emotional Regulation ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Well Being ◽  
School Students ◽  
Motor Action ◽  
Pedagogical Intervention ◽  
Validated Questionnaires ◽  
Associative Strategy

The education of pleasant interpersonal relationships is one of the great challenges of modern physical education. Learning to live together sustainably is also learning to transform conflicts and the negative emotions elicited by them. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the GIAM pedagogical model (of the Motor Action Research Group) through cooperation-opposition traditional sporting games with competition in the presence of motor conflicts (conflict transformation; relational well-being) and on emotional regulation (management of negative emotions; emotional well-being). Empirical research was carried out using an associative strategy (explanatory study) involving 222 secondary school students (Mage = 14.86; SD = 0.65). A seven-session pedagogical intervention was carried out based on a championship using the Marro (Prisoner’s Bar) game. The students answered two validated questionnaires of socio-emotional well-being, the Games and Emotions Scale (GES-II) and the Motor Conflict Questionnaire (MCQ), at three phases during the experience (beginning, middle, and end). The findings showed that, through the GIAM model, motor conflicts and the intensity of negative emotions were reduced. It was found that conflicts and negative emotions are part of the same phenomenon and that through an appropriate pedagogical program it is possible to turn them into experiences of socio-emotional well-being.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document