Awareness of action in schizophrenia

Abstract

An abnormal sense of agency is among the most characteristic yet perplexing positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Schizophrenics may either attribute the consequences of their own actions to the intentions of others (delusions of influence), or may perceive themselves as causing events which they do not in fact control (megalomania). Previous reports have often described inaccurate agency judgements in schizophrenia, but have not identified the disordered neural mechanisms or psychological processes underlying these judgements. We report the perceived time of a voluntary action and its consequence in eight schizophrenic patients and matched controls. The patients showed an unusually strong binding effect between actions and consequences. Specifically, the temporal interval between action and consequence appeared shorter for patients than for controls. Patients may overassociate their actions with subsequent events, experiencing their actions as having unusual causal efficacy. Disorders of agency may reflect an underlying abnormality in the experience of voluntary action.

Sense of agency and mentalizing: Dissociation of subdomains of social cognition in patients with schizophrenia

“…tendency to attribute what they see to their own agency, despite visual discrepancies (Daprati, et al, 1997, Fourneret, et al, 2001, Haggard et al, 2003, Synofzik et al, 2008. In this regard, we could not detect any difference in attribution style between schizophrenia patients with-and without first-rank symptoms.…”

“…This is also reflected in the schizophrenia literature with respect to speech attribution (Johns et al, 2001, Johns et al, 2006, Stephane et al, 2009) and also with respect to incorrect agency attribution either to external sources or to the self (Daprati, et al, 1997, Fourneret, et al, 2001). In the majority of agency manipulation studies schizophrenia patients showed a tendency similar to that in our study, namely, atendency to attribute what they see to their own agency, despite visual discrepancies (Daprati, et al, 1997, Fourneret, et al, 2001, Haggard et al, 2003, Synofzik et al, 2008. In this regard, we could not detect any difference in attribution style between schizophrenia patients with-and without first-rank symptoms.…”

Differential sensory cortical involvement in auditory and visual sensorimotor temporal recalibration: Evidence from transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

“…For example, diminished SoA associated with increased TRE (Timm, Schönwiesner, SanMiguel, & Schröger, 2014) would result in attributing self-generated thoughts and actions to an external force in schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia showed a similar increased contraction of subjective time between their voluntary action and its consequence through an intentional binding paradigm (Haggard, Martin, Taylor-Clarke, Jeannerod, & Franck, 2003;Maeda et al, 2012;Voss et al, 2010). Given that visual sensory adaptation could be transferred to auditory TRE (Heron et al, 2009;Sugano et al, 2010Sugano et al, , 2012, this transference effect would need to be examined in patient studies when examining auditory TRE for future interventional studies.…”

Dopaminergic medication boosts action–effect binding in Parkinson's disease

“…. Baseline judgements vary widely both across people and across groups (Haggard, Martin, Taylor-Clarke, Jeannerod, & Franck, 2003), and may reflect individual strategies in the attention paid to the clock. In order to control for such individual differences, each participant's judgement in the baseline condition is subtracted from their judgement in the agency conditions.…”