Neural mechanisms of awareness of action

Abstract

The origins of awareness of action (AoA), the ability to report an action just performed, remain elusive. Differing theories ascribe AoA to pre-action, efferent motor/volitional mechanisms versus post-action, afferent sensory/perceptual neural mechanisms. To study these two types of mechanisms and others, we developed a paradigm where very similar aware and unaware actions occur repeatedly. Aware actions demonstrated larger neurophysiological signals both preceding and following movement. The differences included well-known volitional and perceptual event related potentials (PMP, N140, P300), as well as frontal midline theta, event-related alpha/beta desynchronization, and post-move blink rates. On longer time scales, we identified a novel event related potential preceding unaware moves, and found behavioral and pupillometric evidence for decreased attention and arousal over minutes concurrent with AoA loss. Our findings suggest that both dynamic, individual action-associated volitional and perceptual neural activity, as well as long-term attention and arousal states play a role in maintaining AoA.