ABSTRACT090000 According to widely held views in cognitive science harking back to David Hume, causality cannot be perceived directly, but instead is inferred from patterns of sensory experience, and the quality of these inferences is determined by perceivable quantities such as contingency and contiguity. We report results that suggest a reversal of Hume's conjecture: People's sense of time is warped by the experience of causality. In a stimulus-anticipation task, participants' response behavior reflected a shortened experience of time in the case of target stimuli participants themselves had generated, relative to equidistant, equally predictable stimuli they had not caused. These findings suggest that causality in the mind leads to temporal binding of cause and effect, and extend and generalize beyond earlier claims of intentional binding between action and outcome.

People may deny responsibility for negative consequences of their actions by claiming that they were “only obeying orders.” The “Nuremberg defense” offers one extreme example, though it is often dismissed as merely an attempt to avoid responsibility. Milgram’s classic laboratory studies reported widespread obedience to an instruction to harm, suggesting that social coercion may alter mechanisms of voluntary agency, and hence abolish the normal experience of being in control of one’s own actions. However, Milgram’s and other studies relied on dissembling and on explicit measures of agency, which are known to be biased by social norms. Here, we combined coercive instructions to administer harm to a co-participant, with implicit measures of sense of agency, based on perceived compression of time intervals between voluntary actions and their outcomes, and with electrophysiological recordings. In two experiments, an experimenter ordered a volunteer to make a key-press action that caused either financial penalty or demonstrably painful electric shock to their co-participant, thereby increasing their own financial gain. Coercion increased the perceived interval between action and outcome, relative to a situation where participants freely chose to inflict the same harms. Interestingly, coercion also reduced the neural processing of the outcomes of one’s own action. Thus, people who obey orders may subjectively experience their actions as closer to passive movements than fully voluntary actions. Our results highlight the complex relation between the brain mechanisms that generate the subjective experience of voluntary actions and social constructs, such as responsibility. 61Responsibility for action is a key feature of human societies61It depends on association between actions and outcomes in the brain61Claims of reduced responsibility are sometimes based on “only obeying orders”61Two experiments suggest coercion can reduce implicit measures of sense of agency Responsibility for action is a key feature of human societies It depends on association between actions and outcomes in the brain Claims of reduced responsibility are sometimes based on “only obeying orders” Two experiments suggest coercion can reduce implicit measures of sense of agency Acting under coercion modifies the subjective experience of being the author of an action, reducing the perceived temporal association between actions and outcomes. Caspar et al. show that the neural processing of action outcomes under coercion more closely resembles situations of passive movement than actions carried out intentionally.

The feeling of control over actions and their external effects is known as Sense of Agency (SoAg). People usually have a distinctive SoAg for events caused by their own actions. However, if the agent is a child or an older person, this feeling of being responsible for the consequences of an action may differ from what an adult would feel. The idea would be that children and elderly may have a reduced SoAg since their frontal lobes are developing or have started to loose their efficiency. The aim of this study was to elucidate whether the SoAg changes across lifespan, using the Intentional Binding (i.e., the temporal attraction between a voluntary action and its sensory consequence) as implicit measure. Data show that children and elderly are characterized by a reduced SoAg as compared to adults. These findings provide a fundamental step in the characterization of SoAg dynamics throughout individuals lifetime.

"Sense of agency" refers to the feeling of controlling an external event through one's own action. On one influential view, sense of agency is inferred after an action, by "retrospectively" comparing actual effects of actions against their intended effects. In contrast, a "prospective" component of agency, generated during action selection, and in advance of knowing the actual effect, has received less attention. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate prospective contributions of action selection processes to sense of agency. To do so, we dissociated action selection processes from action-outcome matching, by subliminally priming responses to a target. We found that participants experienced greater control over action effects when the action was compatibly versus incompatibly primed. Thus, compatible primes facilitated action selection processing, in turn boosting sense of agency over a subsequent effect. This prospective contribution of action selection processes to sense of agency was accounted for by exchange of signals across a prefrontal-parietal network. Specifically, we found that the angular gyrus (AG) monitors signals relating to action selection in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, to prospectively inform subjective judgments of control over action outcomes. Online monitoring of these signals by AG might provide the subject with a subjective marker of volition, prior to action itself.

Sense of agency refers to the feeling of controlling an external event through one’s own action. On one influential view, sense of agency is inferred after an action, by “retrospectively” comparing actual effects of actions against their intended effects. However, it has been recently shown that earlier processes, linked to action selection, may also contribute to sense of agency, in advance of the action itself, and independently of action effects. The inferior parietal cortex (IPC) may underpin this “prospective” contribution to agency, by monitoring signals relating to fluency of action selection in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Here, we combined transcranial stimulation (TMS) with subliminal priming of action selection to investigate the causal role of these regions in the prospective coding of agency. In a first experiment, we showed that TMS over left IPC at the time of action selection disrupts perceived control over subsequent effects of action. In a second experiment, we exploited the temporal specificity of single-pulse TMS to pinpoint the exact timing of IPC contribution to sense of agency. We replicated the reduction in perceived control at the point of action selection, while observing no effect of TMS-induced disruption of IPC at the time of action outcomes.

According to philosophy of mind and neuroscientific models, the sense of agency can be defined as the sense that I am the one that is generating an action and causing its effects. Such ability to sense ourselves as causal agents is critical for the definition of intentional behavior and is a primary root for human interaction skills. The present mini-review aims at discussing evidences from non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) studies targeting functional correlates of different aspects of agency and evidences on the way stimulation techniques affect such core feature of human subjective experience. Clinical and brain imaging studies helped in defining a neural network mediating agency-related processes, which includes the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), the cingulate cortex (CC), the supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas (SMA and pre-SMA), the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and its inferior regions and the cerebellum. However, while the plurality of those structures mirrors the complexity of the phenomenon, their actual roles with respect to different components of the experience of agency have been primarily explored via correlational techniques, without a clear evidence about their causal significance with respect to the integration of sensorimotor information, intentionalization, and action monitoring processes. Therefore, insights into the specific causal role of different cortical structures can be specified by using NIBS techniques, in order to provide improved understanding into the bases of our ability vs. inability to properly act in complex social contexts.

It has been proposed that inferring personal authorship for an event gives rise to Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). Using a novel, naturalistic paradigm, we conducted two experiments to test this hypothesis and examine the relationship between binding and self-reported authorship. In both experiments, an important authorship indicator – consistency between one’s action and a subsequent event – was manipulated, and its effects on binding and self-reported authorship were measured. Results showed that action-event consistency enhanced both binding and self-reported authorship, supporting the hypothesis that binding arises from an inference of authorship. At the same time, evidence for a dissociation emerged, with consistency having a more robust effect on self-reports than on binding. Taken together, these results suggest that binding and self-reports reveal different aspects of the sense of authorship.

Recently, it has been shown that the perceived times of voluntary movements and their effects are perceived as shifted towards each other. This temporal binding phenomenon was explained by an integrated representation of movement and effect, facilitating operant learning and the experience of intentionality. Here, we investigated whether temporal binding depends on explicit intentional attributions. In Experiment 1, participants intended to either produce or avoid producing an effect (a tone) by the timing of their movements, with the ratio of success being fixed at 2:1. In Experiments 2 and 3, the influence of the action–effect contingency ratio on temporal binding was controlled for by removing the intentional attribution of the effect. The results indicate that temporal binding is a general associative mechanism that facilitates the learning of movement–effect contingencies. Beyond that, temporal binding is sensitive to explicit intentional attributions, which selectively enhance the link between an intentional movement and the effect a moving agent intends to produce.

Intentional binding refers to a temporal attraction in the perceived times of actions and effects. So far, it has solely been investigated using judgments of the perceived time of actions or their effects. The authors report 3 experiments using an alternative method: the estimation of a time interval between a voluntary action and its subsequent effect. Interval estimates were obtained for intervals bounded by different kinds of actions and effects: The actions were either performed by the participants themselves or by the experimenter. The effects, in turn, were movements either applied to the body of the participant or to the experimenter. First, the results validated interval estimation as a method for exploring action awareness. Second, intentional binding was stronger for self-generated compared with observed actions, indicating that private information about the action contributes to action awareness. In contrast, intentional binding did not depend on whether a somatic effect was applied to the participant's or to another person's body. Third, for self-generated actions, external events gave rise to a stronger intentional binding than did somatic effects. This finding indicates that intentional binding especially links actions with their consequences in the external world.

The results first indicated a shortening of the interval between one’s own voluntary action and a subsequent effect, relative to passive movement conditions. Second, intervals initiated by observed movements, either of another person or of an inanimate object, were always perceived like those involving passive movements of one’s own body, and never like those involving active movements. Third, this binding effect was comparable for auditory, somatic and visual effects of action. Our results provide the first direct evidence that agency involves a generalisable relation between actions and their consequences, and is triggered by efferent motor commands.

According to the two-stage model of voluntary action, the ability to perform voluntary action is acquired in two sequential steps. Firstly, associations are acquired between representations of movements and of the effects that frequently follow them. Secondly, the anticipation or perception of an acquired action effect primes the movement that has been learnt to produce this effect; the acquired action-effect associations thus mediate the selection of actions that are most appropriate to achieve an intended action goal. If action-effect learning has an associative basis, it should be influenced by factors that are known to affect instrumental learning, such as the temporal contiguity and the probabilistic contingency of movement and effect. In two experiments, the contiguity or the contingency between key presses and subsequent tones was manipulated in various ways. As expected, both factors affected the acquisition of action-effect relations as assessed by the potency of action effects to prime the corresponding action in a later behavioral test. In particular, evidence of action-effect associations was obtained only if the effect of the action was delayed for no more than 1 s, if the effect appeared more often in the presence than in the absence of the action, or if action and effect were entirely uncorrelated but the effect appeared very often. These findings support the assumption that the control of voluntary actions is based on action-effect representations that are acquired by associative learning mechanisms.

Fink, G. R.; Marshall, J. C.; Halligan, P. W.; Frith, J. M.; Driver, J.; Frackowiak, R. S. J.; Dolan, R. J.

Abstract In adult life, people normally know what they are doing. This experience of controlling one's own actions and, through them, the course of events in the outside world is called 'sense of agency'. It forms a central feature of human experience; however, the brain mechanisms that produce the sense of agency have only recently begun to be investigated systematically. This recent progress has been driven by the development of better measures of the experience of agency, improved design of cognitive and behavioural experiments, and a growing understanding of the brain circuits that generate this distinctive but elusive experience. The sense of agency is a mental and neural state of cardinal importance in human civilization, because it is frequently altered in psychopathology and because it underpins the concept of responsibility in human societies.

Abstract Several recent studies (e.g., Haggard, Aschersleben, Gehrke, & Prinz, 2002; Haggard & Clark, 2003; Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002) have demonstrated a "Temporal Binding" effect in which the interval between an intentional action and its consequent outcome is subjectively shorter compared to equivalent intervals that do not involve intentional action. The bulk of the literature has relied on the "Libet Clock" (Libet, Gleason, Wright, & Pearl, 1983; but see also Engbert & Wohlschl ger, 2007; Engbert, Wohlschl ger, Thomas, & Haggard, 2007; Engbert, Wohlschl ger, & Haggard, 2008). Here we demonstrate that Temporal Binding is a robust finding that can also be reliably achieved with a Magnitude Estimation procedure, and that occurs over intervals far greater than those previously explored. Implications for the underlying mechanisms are discussed. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

When a voluntary action is causally linked with a sensory outcome, the action and its consequent effect are perceived as being closer together in time. This effect is called intentional binding. Although many experiments were conducted on this phenomenon, the underlying neural mechanisms are not well understood. While intentional binding is specific to voluntary action, we presumed that preconscious brain activity (the readiness potential, RP), which occurs before an action is made, might play an important role in this binding effect. In this study, the brain dynamics were recorded with electroencephalography (EEG) and analyzed in single-trials in order to estimate whether intentional binding is correlated with the early neural processes. Moreover, we were interested in different behavioral performance between meditators and non-meditators since meditators are expected to be able to keep attention more consistently on a task. Thus, we performed the intentional binding paradigm with twenty mindfulness meditators and compared them to matched controls. Although, we did not observe a group effect on either behavioral data or EEG recordings, we found that self-initiated movements following ongoing negative deflections of slow cortical potentials (SCPs) result in a stronger binding effect compared to positive potentials, especially regarding the perceived time of the consequent effect. Our results provide the first direct evidence that the early neural activity within the range of SCPs affects perceived time of a sensory outcome that is caused by intentional action.

Abstract A number of internal model concepts are now widespread in neuroscience and cognitive science. These concepts are supported by behavioral, neurophysiological, and imaging data; furthermore, these models have had their structures and functions revealed by such data. In particular, a specific theory on inverse dynamics model learning is directly supported by unit recordings from cerebellar Purkinje cells. Multiple paired forward inverse models describing how diverse objects and environments can be controlled and learned separately have recently been proposed. The 'minimum variance model' is another major recent advance in the computational theory of motor control. This model integrates two furiously disputed approaches on trajectory planning, strongly suggesting that both kinematic and dynamic internal models are utilized in movement planning and control.

Human voluntary actions are accompanied by a distinctive subjective experience termed “sense of agency”. We performed three experiments using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to modulate brain circuits involved in control of action, while measuring stimulation-induced changes in one implicit measure of sense of agency, namely the perceived temporal relationship between a voluntary action and tone triggered by the action. Participants perceived such tones as shifted towards the action that caused them, relative to baseline conditions with tones but no actions. Actions that caused tones were perceived as shifted towards the tone, relative to baseline actions without tones. This ‘intentional binding’ was diminished by anodal stimulation of the left parietal cortex [targeting the angular gyrus (AG)], and, to a lesser extent, by stimulation targeting the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), (Experiment 1). Cathodal AG stimulation had no effect (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 replicated the effect of left anodal AG stimulation for actions made with either the left or the right hand, and showed no effect of right anodal AG stimulation. The angular gyrus has been identified as a key area for explicit agency judgements in previous neuroimaging and lesion studies. Our study provides new causal evidence that the left angular gyrus plays a key role in the perceptual experience of agency.

It is nearly 1002years since Patrick Haggard and colleagues first reported the ‘intentional binding’ effect ( Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002 ). The intentional binding effect refers to the subjective compression of the temporal interval between a voluntary action and its external sensory consequence. Since the first report, considerable interest has been generated and a fascinating array of studies has accumulated. Much of the interest in intentional binding comes from the promise to shed light on human agency. In this review we survey studies on intentional binding, focusing, in particular, on the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency (the experience of controlling action to influence events in the environment). We suggest that, whilst it is yet to be fully explicated, the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency is compelling. We conclude by considering outstanding questions and future directions for research on intentional binding.

Abstract Since discovery of the slow negative electroencephalographic (EEG) activity preceding self-initiated movement by Kornhuber and Deecke [Kornhuber HH, Deecke L. Hirnpotential nderungen bei Willkurbewegungen und passiven Bewegungen des Menschen: Bereitschaftspotential und reafferente Potentiale. Pflugers Archiv 1965;284:1-17], various source localization techniques in normal subjects and epicortical recording in epilepsy patients have disclosed the generator mechanisms of each identifiable component of movement-related cortical potentials (MRCPs) to some extent. The initial slow segment of BP, called 'early BP' in this article, begins about 2 s before the movement onset in the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) with no site-specificity and in the SMA proper according to the somatotopic organization, and shortly thereafter in the lateral premotor cortex bilaterally with relatively clear somatotopy. About 400 ms before the movement onset, the steeper negative slope, called 'late BP' in this article (also referred to as NS'), occurs in the contralateral primary motor cortex (M1) and lateral premotor cortex with precise somatotopy. These two phases of BP are differentially influenced by various factors, especially by complexity of the movement which enhances only the late BP. Event-related desynchronization (ERD) of beta frequency EEG band before self-initiated movements shows a different temporospatial pattern from that of the BP, suggesting different neuronal mechanisms for the two. BP has been applied for investigating pathophysiology of various movement disorders. Volitional motor inhibition or muscle relaxation is preceded by BP quite similar to that preceding voluntary muscle contraction. Since BP of typical waveforms and temporospatial pattern does not occur before organic involuntary movements, BP is used for detecting the participation of the 'voluntary motor system' in the generation of apparently involuntary movements in patients with psychogenic movement disorders. In view of Libet et al.'s report [Libet B, Gleason CA, Wright EW, Pearl DK. Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain 1983;106:623-642] that the awareness of intention to move occurred much later than the onset of BP, the early BP might reflect, physiologically, slowly increasing cortical excitability and, behaviorally, subconscious readiness for the forthcoming movement. Whether the late BP reflects conscious preparation for intended movement or not remains to be clarified.

Abstract Three apraxic patients with lesions in the left parietal cortex were required to execute finger movements with either hand, while the visual feedback they received about the movement was manipulated systematically. We used a device which allowed us to present on a video monitor either the patient's hand or the examiner's hand simultaneously performing an identical or a different movement. In each trial, patients were required to decide whether the hand shown on the screen was their own or not. Hand movements produced in response to verbal command included simple (single-finger extension) and complex gestures (multi-finger extension). Ownership judgements were analysed and compared with those produced by six normal controls and two non-apraxic neurological patients. Apraxic patients and controls accurately recognized their own hand on the screen (own movement condition) and correctly identified the viewed hand as the examiner's when it performed a movement different from their own movement (incongruent movement condition). However, when the viewed hand was the examiner's hand executing their own movement (congruent movement condition), apraxic patients were significantly more impaired than controls. When the results were analysed as a function of gesture type, the number of correct responses was significantly lower for apraxic patients with respect to controls only for complex gestures. Interestingly, when patients executed the finger gestures inaccurately, they still failed to recognize the examiner's hand as alien, and claimed that the correct movement presented on the screen was their own. These results confirm that parietal lesions alter the representational aspects of gestures, and suggest a failure in evaluating and comparing internal and external feedback about movement. We conclude that the parietal cortex plays an important role in generating and maintaining a kinaesthetic model of ongoing movements.

There is an increasing amount of empirical work investigating the sense of agency, i.e. the registration that we are the initiators of our own actions. Many studies try to relate the sense of agency to an internal feed-forward mechanism, called the omparator model . In this paper, we draw a sharp distinction between a non-conceptual level of feeling of agency and a conceptual level of judgement of agency. By analyzing recent empirical studies, we show that the comparator model is not able to explain either. Rather, we argue for a two-step account: a multifactorial weighting process of different agency indicators accounts for the feeling of agency, which is, in a second step, further processed by conceptual modules to form an attribution judgement. This new framework is then applied to disruptions of agency in schizophrenia, for which the comparator model also fails. Two further extensions are discussed: We show that the comparator model can neither be extended to account for the sense of ownership (which also has to be differentiated into a feeling and a judgement of ownership) nor for the sense of agency for thoughts. Our framework, however, is able to provide a unified account for the sense of agency for both actions and thoughts.

Abstract Sense of agency (SoA) refers to the feeling that one's voluntary actions produce external sensory events [1, 2]. Several psychological theories hypothesized links between SoA and affective evaluation [3-6]. For example, people tend to attribute positive outcomes to their own actions, perhaps reflecting high-level narrative processes that enhance self-esteem [3]. Here we provide the first evidence that such emotional modulations also involve changes in the low-level sensorimotor basis of agency. The intentional binding paradigm [1] was used to quantify the subjective temporal compression between a voluntary action and its sensory consequences, providing an implicit measure of SoA. Emotional valence of action outcomes was manipulated by following participants' key-press actions with negative or positive emotional vocalizations [7], or neutral sounds. We found that intentional binding was reduced for negative compared to positive or neutral outcomes. Discriminant analyses identified a change in time perception of both actions and their negative outcomes, demonstrating that the experience of action itself is subject to affective modulation. A small binding benefit was also found for positive action outcomes. Emotional modulation of SoA may contribute to regulating social behavior. Correctly tracking the valenced effects of one's voluntary actions on other people could underlie successful social interactions. Copyright 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Sense of agency (SoA), a feeling that one’s voluntary actions produce events in the external world, is a key factor behind every goal-directed human behaviour. Recent studies have demonstrated that SoA is reduced when one’s voluntary action causes negative outcomes, compared to when it causes positive outcomes. It is yet unclear whether this emotional modulation of SoA is caused by predicting the outcome valence (predictionhypothesis) or by retrospectively interpreting the outcome (postdictionhypothesis). To address this, we emulated a social situation where one’s voluntary action was followed by either another’s negative emotional vocalisation or positive emotional vocalisation. Crucially, the relation between an action and the emotional valence of its outcome was predictable in some blocks of trials, but unpredictable in other blocks. Quantitative, implicit measures of SoA based on the intentional binding effect supported the prediction hypothesis. Our findings imply that the social-emotional modulation of SoA is based on predicting the emotional valence of action outcomes.

The intentional binding effect refers to a subjective compression over a temporal interval between the start point initialized by a voluntary action and the endpoint signaled by an external sensory...

Abstract The anticipative learning model for acquiring action-effect relations states that the acquisition of action-effect relations depends on processes that are part of action planning, in particular the anticipation of possible effects. Experiment 1 shows that response planning is indeed crucial for the learning of response effects. In this experiment distractors (tones) were presented either during response preparation or in the time interval between response execution and the presentation of a response effect. Response-effect learning was impaired when the distractors were presented during response preparation. The finding is consistent with the assumption that the distractors impaired the anticipation of potential effects and therefore reduced effect learning. In Experiment 2 all responses had two effects. Participants were instructed to produce one of the effects. Under this condition, response-effect learning was only found for the instructed effect, not for the non-instructed effect. The two experiments thus support the view that response-effect learning is selective and depends on the anticipation of potential effects during response planning. The results are discussed in terms of a model that explains both the learning of response-effect relations and the use of these effects for action control within the same theoretical framework. Copyright 2003 Springer-Verlag