Beyond the “urge to move”: objective measures for the study of agency in the post-Libet era

Abstract

The investigation of human volition is a longstanding endeavor from both philosophers and researchers. Yet because of the major challenges associated with capturing voluntary movements in an ecologically relevant state in the research environment, it is only in recent years that human agency has grown as a field of cognitive neuroscience. In particular, the seminal work of Libet et al. (1983) paved the way for a neuroscientific approach to agency. Over the past decade, new objective paradigms have been developed to study agency, drawing upon emerging concepts from cognitive and computational neuroscience. These include the chronometric approach of Libet’s study which is embedded in the “intentional binding” paradigm, optimal motor control theory and most recent insights from active inference theory. Here we review these principal methods and their application to the study of agency in health and the insights gained from their application to neurological and psychiatric disorders. We show that the neuropsychological paradigms that are based upon these new approaches have key advantages over traditional experimental designs. We propose that these advantages, coupled with advances in neuroimaging, create a powerful set of tools for understanding human agency and its neurobiological basis.

Different responses of the right superior temporal sulcus to visual movement feedback during self‐generated vs. externally generated hand movements

“…Brass et al ., ; Iacoboni et al ., ; Iacoboni & Dapretto, ; Kilner et al ., ; Grossman et al ., ; Friston et al ., ; cf. Limanowski & Blankenburg, ; Ishida et al ., ; Friston & Frith, ); and they further speak to research implying the STS and nearby regions in determining the sense of agency by detecting discrepancies between intended and actual (possibly externally‐generated) visual movement consequences (Decety et al ., ; Decety & Sommerville, ; Berti et al ., ; Farrer et al ., ; Spengler et al ., ; Wolpe & Rowe, ; Haggard, ).…”

Sensory attenuation of self‐produced signals does not rely on self‐specific motor predictions

“…This sensory attenuation of self‐produced signals has been observed for different sensory modalities, such as touch (Blakemore, Wolpert, & Frith, , ; Shergill, Samson, Bays, Frith, & Wolpert, ), vision (Gentsch & Schütz‐Bosbach, ; Hughes & Waszak, ) or audition (Bäß, Jacobsen, & Schröger, ; Horváth, ), both for subjective measures of stimulus intensity (Sato, ; Weiss, Herwig, & Schütz‐Bosbach, ) and early markers of cortical responses such as the N1 component of the event‐related potential in EEG recordings (Baess, Horváth, Jacobsen, & Schröger, ; Bäß et al., ; Martikainen, Kaneko, & Hari, ; Saupe, Widmann, Trujillo‐Barreto, & Schröger, ; Timm, SanMiguel, Saupe, & Schröger, ). Sensory attenuation of self‐ compared to other‐produced signals has been assumed to indicate neural mechanisms that help us to differentiate between ourselves' and others' actions, and thus develop a sense of agency over the results of our own motor movements (Gentsch & Schütz‐Bosbach, ; Haggard, ; Haggard & Tsakiris, ; Wolpe & Rowe, ).…”

Illusory Temporal Binding in Meditators

“…Bayes factors for group differences in each measure were therefore calculated using a half-normal distribution with SD based on half the total shift in the control group. The direction we used is that predicted by cue combination and sensorimotor pre-representation theories of intentional binding, given the assumptions discussed in the introduction (Wolpe and Rowe 2014). That is, the prediction was a greater outcome binding for meditators rather than controls, but a reduced action binding.…”

“…In terms of this mechanism, this could result either from more reliable sensorimotor pre-representations of the outcome tone (Waszak et al 2012) or through greater precision (and therefore greater weight) being afforded to intentional action in an outcome timing judgement (Wolpe et al 2013). As there is some agreement that action binding is a result of cue integration, action binding would be smaller in meditators if there is a relative increase in precision of action judgements, reducing the relative contribution of the tone to action timing judgements (Wolpe and Rowe 2014). …”