Cited by 68Free Will and AgencySchizophrenia research and treatmentNeural and Behavioral Psychology Studies

In and out of control: brain mechanisms linking fluency of action selection to self-agency in patients with schizophrenia

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Voss, Martin, Chambon, Valérian, Wenke, Dorit, Kühn, Simone, Haggard, Patrick·2017·Brain

Abstract

Sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over one's actions, and their consequences. It involves both predictive processes linked to action control, and retrospective 'sense-making' causal inferences. Schizophrenia has been associated with impaired predictive processing, but the underlying mechanisms that impair patients' sense of agency remain unclear. We introduce a new 'prospective' aspect of agency and show that subliminally priming an action not only influences response times, but also influences reported sense of agency over subsequent action outcomes. This effect of priming was associated with altered connectivity between frontal areas and the angular gyrus. The effects on response times and on frontal action selection mechanisms were similar in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy volunteers. However, patients showed no effects of priming on sense of agency, no priming-related activation of angular gyrus, and no priming-related changes in fronto-parietal connectivity. We suggest angular gyrus activation reflects the experiences of agency, or non-agency, in part by processing action selection signals generated in the frontal lobes. The altered action awareness that characterizes schizophrenia may be due to impaired communication between these areas.

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  • Exposure to uncontrollable stressors biases controllability estimation, establishing relevance for neuropsychiatric disorders involving altered perceptions of controllability.

    “Furthermore, exposure to uncontrollable stressors biases this process assessed by the explore-and-predict task, hence establishing its relevance for the study of neuropsychiatric disorders involving altered perceptions of controllability 9,12,13,35 .”

    From Stress-sensitive inference of task controllability (2022) · cites this paper as [35]

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Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Chambon V, Haggard P. Premotor or ideomotor: how does the ex- perience of action come about? In: Prinz W, Beisert M, Herwig A, editors. Action science: foundation of an emerging discipline. Cambridge, MIT Press; 2013.
  2. Nelson B, Whitford TJ, Lavoie S, Sass LA. What are the neurocogni- tive correlates of basic self-disturbance in schizophrenia? Integrating phenomenology and neurocognition: Part 2 (aberrant salience). Schizophr Res 2014b; 152:20-7.

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Authors
Voss, M., Chambon, V., Wenke, D., Kühn, S., & Haggard, P.
Affiliations
  • Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE)
  • University of Geneva (CH)
  • University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (DE)
  • University College London (GB)
Corresponding author
Haggard, Patrick
Venue
Brain
Published
2017-07-03
Volume
140
Issue
8
Pages
2226-2239
ISSN
  • 0006-8950 (ISSN-L)
  • 1460-2156
OpenAlex
W2732443920
Cited by
68
References
87
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 2
FWCI
3.77
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Brain (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Volkswagen Foundation (II/85 067)
  • Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (2852/3-1)
  • ERC (323943)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Free Will and Agency
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
Keywords
sense of agency, schizophrenia, action selection, action fluency, subliminal priming, angular gyrus, frontoparietal connectivity, predictive processing, action awareness, reaction time (psychology), frontal lobe
MeSH terms
Self-Control, Adult, Choice Behavior, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Parietal Lobe, Photic Stimulation, Reaction Time, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenic Psychology, Case-Control Studies, Prefrontal Cortex, Young Adult, Functional Neuroimaging, Repetition Priming

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