When Passive Feels Active - Delusion-Proneness Alters Self-Recognition in the Moving Rubber Hand Illusion

Psychotic patients have problems with bodily self-recognition such as the experience of self-produced actions (sense of agency) and the perception of the body as their own (sense of ownership). While it has been shown that such impairments in psychotic patients can be explained by hypersalient processing of external sensory input it has also been suggested that they lack normal efference copy in voluntary action. However, it is not known how problems with motor predictions like efference copy contribute to impaired sense of agency and ownership in psychosis or psychosis-related states. We used a rubber hand illusion based on finger movements and measured sense of agency and ownership to compute a bodily self-recognition score in delusion-proneness (indexed by Peters’ Delusion Inventory - PDI). A group of healthy subjects (n=71) experienced active movements (involving motor predictions) or passive movements (lacking motor predictions). We observed a highly significant correlation between delusion-proneness and self-recognition in the passive conditions, while no such effect was observed in the active conditions. This was seen for both ownership and agency scores. The result suggests that delusion-proneness is associated with hypersalient external input in passive conditions, resulting in an abnormal experience of the illusion. We hypothesize that this effect is not present in the active condition because deficient motor predictions counteract hypersalience in psychosis proneness.     

It’s Not My Fault: Postdictive Modulation of Intentional Binding by Monetary Gains and Losses

Sense of agency refers to the feeling that one’s voluntary actions caused external events. Past studies have shown that compression of the subjective temporal interval between actions and external events, called intentional binding, is closely linked to the experience of agency. Current theories postulate that the experience of agency is constructed via predictive and postdictive pathways. One remaining problem is the source of human causality bias; people often make misjudgments on the causality of voluntary actions and external events depending on their rewarding or punishing outcomes. Although human causality bias implies that sense of agency can be modified by post-action information, convincing empirical findings for this issue are lacking. Here, we hypothesized that sense of agency would be modified by affective valences of action outcomes. To examine this issue, we investigated how rewarding and punishing outcomes following voluntary action modulate behavioral measures of agency using intentional binding paradigm and classical conditioning procedures. In the acquisition phase, auditory stimuli were paired with positive, neutral or negative monetary outcomes. Tone-reward associations were evaluated using reaction times and preference ratings. In the experimental session, participants performed a variant of intentional binding task, where participants made timing judgments for onsets of actions and sensory outcomes while playing simple slot games. Our results showed that temporal binding was modified by affective valences of action outcomes. Specifically, intentional binding was attenuated when negative outcome occurred, consistent with self-serving bias. Our study not only provides evidence for postdictive modification of agency, but also proposes a possible mechanism of human causality bias.     

The sense of agency is action–effect causality perception based on cross-modal grouping

Sense of agency, the experience of controlling external events through one''s actions, stems from contiguity between action- and effect-related signals. Here we show that human observers link their action- and effect-related signals using a computational principle common to cross-modal sensory grouping. We first report that the detection of a delay between tactile and visual stimuli is enhanced when both stimuli are synchronized with separate auditory stimuli (experiment 1). This occurs because the synchronized auditory stimuli hinder the potential grouping between tactile and visual stimuli. We subsequently demonstrate an analogous effect on observers'' key press as an action and a sensory event. This change is associated with a modulation in sense of agency; namely, sense of agency, as evaluated by apparent compressions of action–effect intervals (intentional binding) or subjective causality ratings, is impaired when both participant''s action and its putative visual effect events are synchronized with auditory tones (experiments 2 and 3). Moreover, a similar role of action–effect grouping in determining sense of agency is demonstrated when the additional signal is presented in the modality identical to an effect event (experiment 4). These results are consistent with the view that sense of agency is the result of general processes of causal perception and that cross-modal grouping plays a central role in these processes.     

Neural Substrates for Judgment of Self-Agency in Ambiguous Situations

The sense of agency is the attribution of oneself as the cause of one’s own actions and their effects. Accurate agency judgments are essential for adaptive behaviors in dynamic environments, especially in conditions of uncertainty. However, it is unclear how agency judgments are made in ambiguous situations where self-agency and non-self-agency are both possible. Agency attribution is thus thought to require higher-order neurocognitive processes that integrate several possibilities. Furthermore, neural activity specific to self-attribution, as compared with non-self-attribution, may reflect higher-order critical operations that contribute to constructions of self-consciousness. Based on these assumptions, the present study focused on agency judgments under ambiguous conditions and examined the neural correlates of this operation with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants performed a simple but demanding agency-judgment task, which required them to report on whether they attributed their own action as the cause of a visual stimulus change. The temporal discrepancy between the participant’s action and the visual events was adaptively set to be maximally ambiguous for each individual on a trial-by-trial basis. Comparison with results for a control condition revealed that the judgment of agency was associated with activity in lateral temporo-parietal areas, medial frontal areas, the dorsolateral prefrontal area, and frontal operculum/insula regions. However, most of these areas did not differentiate between self- and non-self-attribution. Instead, self-attribution was associated with activity in posterior midline areas, including the precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex. These results suggest that deliberate self-attribution of an external event is principally associated with activity in posterior midline structures, which is imperative for self-consciousness.     

Induction par la température d'une physiologie mâle chez les néo-femelles et les intersexués du Crustacé Oniscoïde Armadillidium vulgare Latr., hébergeant un bactéroïde à action féminisante

In the Oniscoid Armadillidium vulgare, inside the thelygenic line of the Niort population, intersexed females, whatever their sizes, and most of the young neo-females from 5 to 6 mm long (males feminized by a polytropic intracytoplasmic bacteroid kept for 13— 47 days at 35°C, and then replaced at 20°C, are masculinized. The masculinization of their external sexual characters is more or less complete, and the ovary is changed into a functional testicle with one or several utricles, each of them having an androgenic neogland. This masculinization, which restores a phenotype corresponding with the genotype, goes with the disappearance of the typical forms of the bacteroid, such as they are observed in neo-females and the intersexed individuals kept at 20° C.

Yet, this male physiology is only temporary: a female physiology is restored after the animals have been kept at 20° C for 2–4 mth, but the acquired male differentiation is maintained. This implies that special forms of bacteroids continue to exist and that, when the host is again kept at 20° C, they produce the typical feminizing factors.

The absence of masculinization in neo-female adults is not due to the maintenance of the bacteroid, but to the impossibility of inducing the differentiation of an androgenic neo-gland after the 6th molt of the postembryonic development; the cells of the primal androgenic gland—which exist in all females—have then completely disappeared, or have definitively turned into conjunctival cells. Masculinization does not occur either in real young females (genetic females), which proves that temperature is only an indirect cause, and acts by inhibition of the feminization action of the bacteroid.     

Self-motion holds a special status in visual processing

Agency plays an important role in self-recognition from motion. Here, we investigated whether our own movements benefit from preferential processing even when the task is unrelated to self-recognition, and does not involve agency judgments. Participants searched for a moving target defined by its known shape among moving distractors, while continuously moving the computer mouse with one hand. They thereby controlled the motion of one item, which was randomly either the target or any of the distractors, while the other items followed pre-recorded motion pathways. Performance was more accurate and less prone to degradation as set size increased when the target was the self-controlled item. An additional experiment confirmed that participant-controlled motion was not physically more salient than motion recorded offline. We found no evidence that self-controlled items captured attention. Taken together, these results suggest that visual events are perceived more accurately when they are the consequences of our actions, even when self-motion is task irrelevant.     

Paroxysmal posterior variant alien hand syndrome associated with parietal lobe infarction: case presentation

Alien hand syndrome (AHS) is an involuntary and rare neurological disorder emerges at upper extremity. AHS is a disconnection syndrome with the symptoms of losing sense of agency and sense of ownership, and presence of involuntary autonomic motor activity. There are frontal, callosal and posterior types of AHS and each of them occurs depend on the lesions of different of the brain. Posterior variant is a rarely encountered AHS type compared to others. AHS, generally regarded as persistent, but rarely maybe observed as paroxysmal. In this article, we present 71 year old patient with right posterior parietal lobe infarction and developed posterior variant AHS on left arm 1 month after discharge from the hospital. To discriminate AHS from conditions such as extrapyramidal movement disorders and epileptic seizures that take part in differential diagnosis should be kept in mind by the clinicians. Wrong and unnecessary treatments could be prevented in this way.     

Schema design and implementation of the grasp-related mirror neuron system

 Mirror neurons within a monkey's premotor area F5 fire not only when the monkey performs a certain class of actions but also when the monkey observes another monkey (or the experimenter) perform a similar action. It has thus been argued that these neurons are crucial for understanding of actions by others. We offer the hand-state hypothesis as a new explanation of the evolution of this capability: the basic functionality of the F5 mirror system is to elaborate the appropriate feedback – what we call the hand state– for opposition-space based control of manual grasping of an object. Given this functionality, the social role of the F5 mirror system in understanding the actions of others may be seen as an exaptation gained by generalizing from one's own hand to an other's hand. In other words, mirror neurons first evolved to augment the “canonical” F5 neurons (active during self-movement based on observation of an object) by providing visual feedback on “hand state,” relating the shape of the hand to the shape of the object. We then introduce the MNS1 (mirror neuron system 1) model of F5 and related brain regions. The existing Fagg–Arbib–Rizzolatti–Sakata model represents circuitry for visually guided grasping of objects, linking the anterior intraparietal area (AIP) with F5 canonical neurons. The MNS1 model extends the AIP visual pathway by also modeling pathways, directed toward F5 mirror neurons, which match arm–hand trajectories to the affordances and location of a potential target object. We present the basic schemas for the MNS1 model, then aggregate them into three “grand schemas”– visual analysis of hand state, reach and grasp, and the core mirror circuit – for each of which we present a useful implementation (a non-neural visual processing system, a multijoint 3-D kinematics simulator, and a learning neural network, respectively). With this implementation we show how the mirror system may learnto recognize actions already in the repertoire of the F5 canonical neurons. We show that the connectivity pattern of mirror neuron circuitry can be established through training, and that the resultant network can exhibit a range of novel, physiologically interesting behaviors during the process of action recognition. We train the system on the basis of final grasp but then observe the whole time course of mirror neuron activity, yielding predictions for neurophysiological experiments under conditions of spatial perturbation, altered kinematics, and ambiguous grasp execution which highlight the importance of the timingof mirror neuron activity. Received: 6 August 2001 / Accepted in revised form: 5 February 2002     

Interplay of Agency and Ownership: The Intentional Binding and Rubber Hand Illusion Paradigm Combined

The sense of agency (SoA) refers to the phenomenal experience of initiating and controlling an action, whereas the sense of ownership (SoO) describes the feeling of myness an agent experiences towards his or her own body parts. SoA has been investigated with intentional binding paradigms, and the sense of ownership (SoO) with the rubber-hand illusion (RHI). We investigated the relationship between SoA and SoO by incorporating intentional binding into the RHI. Explicit and implicit measures of agency (SoA-questionnaire, intentional binding) and ownership (SoO-questionnaire, proprioceptive drift) were used. Artificial hand position (congruent/incongruent) and mode of agent (self-agent/other-agent) were systematically varied. Reported SoO varied mainly with position (higher in congruent conditions), but also with agent (higher in self-agent conditions). Reported SoA was modulated by agent (higher in self-agent conditions), and moderately by position (higher in congruent conditions). Implicit and explicit agency measures were not significantly correlated. Finally, intentional binding tended to be stronger in self-generated than observed voluntary actions. Results provide further evidence for a partial double dissociation between SoA and SoO, empirically distinct agency levels, and moderate intentional binding differences between self-generated and observed voluntary actions.     

Effects of external ions on membrane potentials of a crayfish giant axon

Transmembrane potentials in the crayfish giant axon have been investigated as a function of the concentration of normally occurring external cations. Results have been compared with data already available for the lobster and squid giant axons. The magnitude of the action potential was shown to be a linear function of the log of the external sodium concentration, as would be predicted for an ideal sodium electrode. The resting potential is an inverse function of the external potassium concentration, but behaves as an ideal potassium electrode only at the higher external concentrations of potassium. Decrease in external calcium results in a decrease in both resting potential and action potential; an increase in external calcium above normal has no effect on magnitude of transmembrane potentials. Magnesium can partially substitute for calcium in the maintenance of normal action potential magnitude, but appears to have very little effect on resting potential. All ionic effects studied are completely reversible. The results are in generally good agreement with data presently available for the lobster giant axon and for the squid giant axon.     

Vasopressin maintenance of ethanol tolerance requires intact brain noradrenergic systems

We have demonstrated that the mammalian antidiuretic hormone, arginine vasopressin (AVP), will maintain functional tolerance to the hypnotic effect of ethanol in mice, beyond the time in which such tolerance normally dissipates. However, when mice are made tolerant to ethanol and then injected intraventricularly with 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA), AVP is no longer effective in maintaining tolerance. The action of AVP was attenuated by a dose of 6-OHDA which significantly lowered brain norepinephrine, but not dopamine levels, suggesting that the maintenance of ethanol tolerance by AVP may require the presence of intact noradrenergic pathways in brain.     

Motor agency: a new and highly sensitive measure to reveal agency disturbances in early psychosis

Background

Early diagnosis of young adults at risk of schizophrenia is essential for preventive approaches of the illness. Nevertheless, classic screening instruments are difficult to use because of the non-specific nature of the signs at this pre-onset phase of illness. The objective of the present contribution was to propose an innovating test that can probe the more specific symptom of psychosis, i.e., the sense of agency, which is defined as being the immediate experience of oneself as the cause of an action. More specifically, we tested whether motor agency is abnormal in early psychosis.

Methods

Thirty-two young symptomatic patients and their age-matched controls participated in the study. 15 of these patients were at ultra high-risk for developing psychosis (UHR), and 17 patients were suffering from first-episode psychosis (FEP). Patients'' neurocognitive capacities were assessed through the use of seven neuropsychological tests. A motor agency task was also introduced to obtain an objective indicator of the degree of sense of agency, by contrasting force levels applied during other and self-produced collisions between a hand-held objet and a pendulum.

Results

As reported in the literature for adult controls, healthy adolescents used more efficient force levels in self than in other-imposed collisions. For both UHR and FEP patients, abnormally high levels of grip force were used for self-produced collisions, leading to an absence of difference between self and other. The normalized results revealed that motor agency differentiated patients from controls with a higher level of sensitivity than the more classic neuropsychological test battery.

Conclusions

This study is in favour of the existence of an abnormal sense of agency early in the psychotic illness. Because it is quick and none verbal, motor agency may be a valuable tool to use in complement to classic interviews, especially when investigating complex ineffable experiences that are difficult to explicitly describe.     

Bridging the explanatory gaps: What can we learn from a biological agency perspective?

We begin this article by delineating the explanatory gaps left by prevailing gene-focused approaches in our understanding of phenotype determination, inheritance, and the origin of novel traits. We aim not to diminish the value of these approaches but to highlight where their implementation, despite best efforts, has encountered persistent limitations. We then discuss how each of these explanatory gaps can be addressed by expanding research foci to take into account biological agency—the capacity of living systems at various levels to participate in their own development, maintenance, and function by regulating their structures and activities in response to conditions they encounter. Here we aim to define formally what agency and agents are and—just as importantly—what they are not, emphasizing that agency is an empirical property connoting neither intention nor consciousness. Lastly, we discuss how incorporating agency helps to bridge explanatory gaps left by conventional approaches, highlight scientific fields in which implicit agency approaches are already proving valuable, and assess the opportunities and challenges of more systematically incorporating biological agency into research programs.     

Reconciling competing mechanisms posited to underlie auditory verbal hallucinations

Perception is not the passive registration of incoming sensory data. Rather, it involves some analysis by synthesis, based on past experiences and context. One adaptive consequence of this arrangement is imagination—the ability to richly simulate sensory experiences, interrogate and manipulate those simulations, in service of action and decision making. In this paper, we will discuss one possible cost of this adaptation, namely hallucinations—perceptions without sensory stimulation, which characterize serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, but which also occur in neurological illnesses, and—crucially for the present piece—are common also in the non-treatment-seeking population. We will draw upon a framework for imagination that distinguishes voluntary from non-voluntary experiences and explore the extent to which the varieties and features of hallucinations map onto this distinction, with a focus on auditory-verbal hallucinations (AVHs)—colloquially, hearing voices. We will propose that sense of agency for the act of imagining is key to meaningfully dissecting different forms and features of AVHs, and we will outline the neural, cognitive and phenomenological sequelae of this sense. We will conclude that a compelling unifying framework for action, perception and belief—predictive processing—can incorporate observations regarding sense of agency, imagination and hallucination.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation’.     

生物古地理、分子分异时间及化石纪录:古中华貂在内蒙古阿巴嘎旗晚中新世宝格达乌拉组的新材料(英文)

北美现生的潘氏貂Martes pennanti(荷兰殖民区俗名fisher,北美印地安土著俗名pe-kan)传统被归入貂属(Martes)。20世纪70年代初Elaine Anderson首先认识到北美fisher的祖先可以追溯到中国山西保德晚中新世的古中华貂M.palaeosinensis。它们的共同特征是上裂齿唇侧具有一个孤立的小齿根。因此在众多的化石和现生貂中,这些具有多一个小齿根的种类可以归入它们自己的一个分支,并重新启用已建立的Pekania属来区别于其他种类。近年来新兴的分子系统研究也趋于把北美的fisher与中、南美的Eira及北半球的狼獾(Gulo)并列,甚至指示它可能是狼獾的姊妹群。因此把fisher独立归入Pekania属中可能是未来的方向。2009年我们在内蒙古阿巴嘎旗宝格达乌拉组的晚中新世地层中发现了一个古中华貂的上颌。这是该种在内蒙古的首次发现,借此机会对目前的分子系统关系、分异年代及化石记录进行综合探讨。虽然保德和宝格达乌拉的古中华貂在时代上与分子钟估算的5～8Ma比较一致,狼獾的化石记录却远比古中华貂的老(可以追到11Ma左右)。如果狼獾确实是fisher的姊妹群或与它并系的话,那么fisher的分异时间也可能更早。     

Metabolites and analogs of 1alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3): evaluation of actions in bone

Analogs of 1alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3) [1alpha,25(OH)(2)D(3)] activate both genomic mechanisms via the nuclear vitamin D(3) receptor (nVDR) and nongenomic pathways via the plasma membrane vitamin D(3) receptor (pmVDR). Both of these pathways are normally activated by 1alpha,25(OH)(2)D(3), but as a result of synthesis of numerous analogs of 1alpha,25(OH)(2)D(3) these pathways can be distinguished. We used increasing doses of vitamin D(3) analogs to determine their potencies of action on these two distinct pathways, measuring calcium channel potentiation as an indicator of the nongenomic action and measuring increases in osteocalcin mRNA and protein release and bone resorption as indicators of genomic action. We found that both 25(OH)-16,23E-diene-D(3) (R) and 1alpha,25(OH)(2)-16,23E-diene-D(3) (A) are 10-fold more potent than 1alpha,25(OH)(2)D(3) for activation of the nongenomic pathway because double bonds in the side chain and the D ring increase the affinity for calcium channel potentiation. While the C-1alpha-hydroxyl group is not necessary for potentiation of calcium channels, methyl groups at this position can alter the affinity for calcium channel potentiation. On the other hand, 1000 fold higher concentrations of nongenomic analogs were needed compared to 1alpha,25(OH)(2)D(3) to increase osteocalcin mRNA or protein release. 1alpha,25-Dihydroxy-16-ene-23-yne-26,27-hexafluorovitamin D(3), (E) is an agent that is 10 fold more potent than 1alpha,25(OH)(2)D(3) at increasing osteocalcin mRNA and protein release, whereas 1alpha,25(OH)(2)-3-epi-D(3) increases osteocalcin mRNA and protein with a potency over 10 fold lower than 1alpha,25(OH)(2)D(3). These results suggest that double bonds in the side chain and the D ring stabilize action on the nongenomic pathway whereas F(6) on the terminal portion of the side chain increases potency for nVDR. On the other hand, while the C-1alpha-hydroxyl group is necessary for activation of genomic events via nVDR, the activation of nongenomic events occurs in the absence of this group.     

Protein import into mitochondria: the requirement for external ATP is precursor-specific whereas intramitochondrial ATP is universally needed for translocation into the matrix.

ATP is needed for the import of precursor proteins into mitochondria. However, the role of ATP and its site of action have been unclear. We have now investigated the ATP requirements for protein import into the mitochondrial matrix. These experiments employed an in vitro system that allowed ATP levels to be manipulated both inside and outside the mitochondrial inner membrane. Our results indicate that there are two distinct ATP requirements for mitochondrial protein import. ATP in the matrix is always needed for complete import of precursor proteins into this compartment, even when the precursors are presented to mitochondria in an unfolded conformation. In contrast, the requirement for external ATP is precursor-specific; depletion of external ATP strongly inhibits import of some precursors but has little or no effect with other precursors. A requirement for external ATP can often be overcome by denaturing the precursor with urea. We suggest that external ATP promotes the release of precursors from cytosolic chaperones, whereas matrix ATP drives protein translocation across the inner membrane.