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Link to original content: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23508565
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. 2013 Mar 15:4:127.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00127. eCollection 2013.

The experience of agency: an interplay between prediction and postdiction

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The experience of agency: an interplay between prediction and postdiction

Matthis Synofzik et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

The experience of agency, i.e., the registration that I am the initiator of my actions, is a basic and constant underpinning of our interaction with the world. Whereas several accounts have underlined predictive processes as the central mechanism (e.g., the comparator model by C. Frith), others emphasized postdictive inferences (e.g., post-hoc inference account by D. Wegner). Based on increasing evidence that both predictive and postdictive processes contribute to the experience of agency, we here present a unifying but at the same time parsimonious approach that reconciles these accounts: predictive and postdictive processes are both integrated by the brain according to the principles of optimal cue integration. According to this framework, predictive and postdictive processes each serve as authorship cues that are continuously integrated and weighted depending on their availability and reliability in a given situation. Both sensorimotor and cognitive signals can serve as predictive cues (e.g., internal predictions based on an efferency copy of the motor command or cognitive anticipations based on priming). Similarly, other sensorimotor and cognitive cues can each serve as post-hoc cues (e.g., visual feedback of the action or the affective valence of the action outcome). Integration and weighting of these cues might not only differ between contexts and individuals, but also between different subject and disease groups. For example, schizophrenia patients with delusions of influence seem to rely less on (probably imprecise) predictive motor signals of the action and more on post-hoc action cues like e.g., visual feedback and, possibly, the affective valence of the action outcome. Thus, the framework of optimal cue integration offers a promising approach that directly stimulates a wide range of experimentally testable hypotheses on agency processing in different subject groups.

Keywords: agency; comparator model; control; delusions of influence; efference copy; internal model; optimal cue integration; schizophrenia.

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Figure 1
Figure 1
Proposed account of optimal cue integration underlying the experience of agency. The sense of agency arises from a complex interplay between a predictive component on the one hand and a postdictive component on the other hand. On a sensorimotor level, the predictive component comprises of “sensorimotor priors”: internal cues such as motor predictions (computed in a forward model), action selection, and motor output signals as well as an efference copy of the motor command. Depending on the context and the environment, these internal signals can directly lead to a feeling of agency which only arises due to internal motor command signals. On other occasions, predictions are compared to or integrated with external cues such as sensory input, resulting in a postdictive feeling of agency. A low-level, prereflective feeling of agency can lead to a more explicit judgement of agency on the cognitive level. Here, background information about the environment, internal knowledge about the world or background beliefs have a strong influence on agency judgement. Judgements as well as background beliefs and contextual information in turn can change priors on the sensorimotor level. Furthermore, emotional appraisal, anticipation of reward or punishment or value attribution may influence the weighing of internal or external signals on both the sensorimotor and cognitive level.

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