Functional and neurophysiological basis of voluntary action control: Behavioral, TMS, and EEG studies - VAC
Final Report Abstract
Humans either carry out actions to produce certain effects in the environment meant to meet the agent’s goals; or they carry out actions to accommodate to environmental demands. The first type of action may be referred to as intention-based or voluntary, the latter kind may be referred to as stimulus-based or reactive. Recent research suggests that stimulus- and intention-based actions are controlled by different neural structures. Moreover, the two "routes to action" work in a different fashion: In the stimulus-based mode, subjects hand over control to the stimuli, in that the system merely acts reflexively upon presentation of a stimulus in a pre-specified way. In this mode, actions are selected with respect to their environmental sensory antecedents. In the intention-based mode, actions are guided by the ideomotor principle. According to the ideomotor theory, voluntary action control is based on learned associations between movements and their perceivable consequences. An intention-based action, so the ideomotor theory, can be triggered by anticipating these consequences. The present project thought to study (1) the neuro-cognitive mechanisms of intention-based action control as well as the functional differences between intention- and stimulusbased actions, (2) the role of distal sensory consequences in intention-based action control and finally, (3), the coordination of intention- and stimulus-based action. Our results suggest that distal sensory consequences of actions indeed activate the same processing chains within the motor system that are normally involved in the control of the action the sensory effect is generated by. Moreover, we found evidence suggesting that internally and externally triggered actions are controlled by the same, rather than different processing chains within the brain. Together, our studies revealed new insights into the functional and neurophysiological underpinnings of action control.
Publications
-
(2010). A New Look at Sensory Attenuation: Action-Effect Anticipation Affects Sensitivity, Not Response Bias. Psychological Science, 21(12), 1740– 1745
Cardoso-Leite, P., Mamassian, P., Schütz-Bosbach, S., & Waszak, F.
-
(2011). One action system or two? Evidence for common central preparatory mechanisms in voluntary and stimulus-driven actions. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(46), 16692-16699
Hughes, G., Schütz-Bosbach, S., & Waszak, F.
-
(2012). Believing and Perceiving: authorship belief modulates sensory attenuation. PLoS ONE, 7(5), e37959
Desantis, A., Weiss, C., Schütz-Bosbach, S., & Waszak, F.
-
(2012). When sounds become actions: higher-order representation of newly learned action sounds in the human motor system. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24(2), 464-474
Ticini, L.F., Schütz-Bosbach, S., Weiss, C., Casile, A., & Waszak, F.
