Self-agency built with sensorimotor processing: Decoding self-other action attribution in the human brain

Abstract

A sense of agency can be defined as a subjective experience that I am the one who is causing or generating an action. Several brain regions have been proposed as neural substrates of the subjective experience; however, how the information is processed and organized by each region to achieve the sense of agency still remains unclear. In this study, we have clarified the neural representations corresponding to three processes namely, sensorimotor error, feeling of agency, and judgment of agency. Specifically, we found that the widespread sensorimotor areas represent sensorimotor error information. The right inferior parietal lobe represents the information solely on self-/other-attribution even during movements, which corresponds to the feeling of agency. Finally, the right inferior frontal gyrus shows a distinct representation between self- and other-attribution immediately before reporting the judgment on the movement attribution. These results suggest that the brain builds a sense of agency by developing distinct types of information each corresponding to the three processes with the passage of time.