TY - JOUR
T1 - Right parietotemporal activity predicts sense of agency under uncertain delays of sensory outcomes
AU - Rashidi, Mahmoud
AU - Schmitgen, Michael
AU - Weisbrod, Matthias
AU - Schnell, Knut
AU - Wolf, Robert Christian
AU - Whittington, Miles Adrian
N1 - © 2021, Journal of Neurophysiology. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details
PY - 2021/3/1
Y1 - 2021/3/1
N2 - Sense of agency is the experience of control over one's own action and its consequent outcomes. The perceived time between a motor action and its consequent sensory outcomes (e.g., a flash of light) is shorter for a voluntary than involuntary action, a phenomenon known as intentional binding which has been used extensively as an implicit measure of sense of agency. We developed a novel task in which participants had to respond whether a flash appeared immediately or with a delay relative to their voluntary action. We found that under high, but not low, uncertainty about the perceived time between voluntary finger movement and a subsequent flash of light, a prediction signal was generated in the right inferior parietal lobule prior to motor action. This prediction signal was linked to the emergence of a sudden insight solution (colloquially referred to as "Aha!" moment) in the right superior temporal gyrus prior to response. Single-trial event-related potential analysis revealed a reliable correlation between amplitudes of pre-motor and pre-response activities. The results suggest the existence of a predictive mechanism under high uncertainty about the timing of the sensory consequences of a voluntary motor action. The results are in line with the optimal cue integration theory of sense of agency which states that both predictive and postdictive agency cues are crucial for the formation of sense of agency and the weight of each type of cue (predictive or postdictive) depends on their availability and reliability.
AB - Sense of agency is the experience of control over one's own action and its consequent outcomes. The perceived time between a motor action and its consequent sensory outcomes (e.g., a flash of light) is shorter for a voluntary than involuntary action, a phenomenon known as intentional binding which has been used extensively as an implicit measure of sense of agency. We developed a novel task in which participants had to respond whether a flash appeared immediately or with a delay relative to their voluntary action. We found that under high, but not low, uncertainty about the perceived time between voluntary finger movement and a subsequent flash of light, a prediction signal was generated in the right inferior parietal lobule prior to motor action. This prediction signal was linked to the emergence of a sudden insight solution (colloquially referred to as "Aha!" moment) in the right superior temporal gyrus prior to response. Single-trial event-related potential analysis revealed a reliable correlation between amplitudes of pre-motor and pre-response activities. The results suggest the existence of a predictive mechanism under high uncertainty about the timing of the sensory consequences of a voluntary motor action. The results are in line with the optimal cue integration theory of sense of agency which states that both predictive and postdictive agency cues are crucial for the formation of sense of agency and the weight of each type of cue (predictive or postdictive) depends on their availability and reliability.
U2 - 10.1152/jn.00640.2020
DO - 10.1152/jn.00640.2020
M3 - Article
SN - 0022-3077
VL - 125
SP - 903
EP - 914
JO - Journal of Neurophysiology
JF - Journal of Neurophysiology
IS - 3
ER -