SENSE OF AGENCY AND INTENTIONAL BINDING: How does the brain link voluntary actions with their consequences?
Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The feeling of generating and controlling external effects through our own actions is known as Sense of Agency (SoAg). When we act we are generally in control of what we are doing and, therefore, we are aware and responsible for both our actions and their consequences. For many years, researchers have tried to identify appropriate measures to study the SoAg. It has often been investigated using explicit tasks in which participants verbally reported if they felt they were the authors of a certain effect. However, in our everyday life, we experience a continuous flow of actions and their effects, and we do know that we are the authors of an action without interrogating ourselves about it or constantly making explicit judgments. Therefore, the use of implicit measures seems to better reflect the complex agency dimension. A very famous and reliable implicit measure is represented by Intentional Binding (IB). This effect occurs when a temporal compression between a voluntary action and its sensory consequence is observed (i.e., actions are perceived as occurring later than they really do, while the sensory effect is perceived as occurring earlier). The effect is limited to voluntary actions; in fact, IB is absent or reduced for situations in which the action is not driven by volition (e.g., passively-induced movement). Since its discovery, IB has been considered a valid quantitative index of SoAg and has been applied to study agency, both in healthy individuals and in clinical populations. In the light of this implicit measure, the aim of the research presented here was to examine the SoAg from different perspectives, in order to provide new penetrating insights to comprehend this phenomenon. After the implementation of a new paradigm to measure IB (Study I), four main intriguing facets have been explored. In Study II, the main focus was to investigate the development and the evolution of the SoAg across the lifespan. Results indicated that SoAg follows a U-inverted shape, with children and elderly showing a reduced SoAg as compared to adult participants. Subsequently, the neural underpinnings of SoAg have been investigated (Study III), uncovering the important contribution of the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) in the perceived action-effect linkage. In Study IV the multisensory nature of the SoAg was explored, highlighting its supramodal nature and demonstrating how SoAg is governed by the same rules at the root of the multisensory integration. After having shed light on these different aspects in healthy populations, the last experiment (Study V) investigated the SoAg in the clinical domain, specifically referring to Parkinson Disease (PD) as a target pathology because of its characteristic difficulty in planning and initiating voluntary actions. Findings showed a reduced SoAg in this clinical population. The results obtained from all the experiments included in the present thesis have been discussed in light of current theories of SoAg.
Author: Annachiara Cavazzana
Language: English
Topic: Free Will and Agency
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2559772149