The sense of agency (SoA) refers to perceived causality of the self, i.e. the feeling of causing something to happen. The SoA has been probed using a variety of explicit and implicit measures. Explicit measures include rating scales and questionnaires. Implicit measures, which include sensory attenuation and temporal binding, use perceptual differences between self- and externally generated stimuli as measures of the SoA. In the present study, we investigated whether the different measures tap into the same self-attribution processes by determining whether individual differences on implicit and explicit measures of SoA are correlated. Participants performed tasks in which they triggered tones via key presses (operant condition) or passively listened to tones triggered by a computer (observational condition). We replicated previously reported effects of sensory attenuation and temporal binding. Surprisingly the two implicit measures of SoA were not significantly correlated with each other, nor did they correlate with the explicit measures of SoA. Our results suggest that some explicit and implicit measures of the SoA may tap into different processes.

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In a preceding article 1 I endeavored to show that all the so-called expressions of emotion are to be accounted for not by reference to emotion, but by reference to movements having some use, either as direct survivals or as disturbances of teleological coordinations. I tried to show that, upon this basis, the various principles for explaining emotional attitudes may be reduced to certain obvious and typical differentia within the teleological movements. In the present paper I wish to reconsider the James-Lange, or discharge, theory of the nature of emotion from the standpoint thus gained; for if all emotions (considered as ' emotional seizures,' Affect* or ' feel,' as I may term it) are constituted by the reflexion of the teleological attitude, the motor and organic discharges, into consciousness, the same principle which explains the attitude must serve to analyze the emotion. The fact, if it be a fact, that all ' emotional expression' is a phase of movements teleologically determined, and not a result of pre-existent emotion, is itself a strong argument for the discharge theory. I had occasion to point out in my previous article that the facts brought under the head of ' antithesis ' and < analogous stimuli' are absolutely unaccountable upon the central theory, and are matters of course upon the James theory. But this statement may be further generalized. If every emotional attitude is referred to useful acts, and if the emotion is not the reflex of such act, where does

Orientation-selective responses can be decoded from fMRI activity patterns in the human visual cortex, using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA). To what extent do these feature-selective activity patterns depend on the strength and quality of the sensory input, and might the reliability of these activity patterns be predicted by the gross amplitude of the stimulus-driven BOLD response? Observers viewed oriented gratings that varied in luminance contrast (4, 20 or 100%) or spatial frequency (0.25, 1.0 or 4.0 cpd). As predicted, activity patterns in early visual areas led to better discrimination of orientations presented at high than low contrast, with greater effects of contrast found in area V1 than in V3. A second experiment revealed generally better decoding of orientations at low or moderate as compared to high spatial frequencies. Interestingly however, V1 exhibited a relative advantage at discriminating high spatial frequency orientations, consistent with the finer scale of representation in the primary visual cortex. In both experiments, the reliability of these orientation-selective activity patterns was well predicted by the average BOLD amplitude in each region of interest, as indicated by correlation analyses, as well as decoding applied to a simple model of voxel responses to simulated orientation columns. Moreover, individual differences in decoding accuracy could be predicted by the signal-to-noise ratio of an individual's BOLD response. Our results indicate that decoding accuracy can be well predicted by incorporating the amplitude of the BOLD response into simple simulation models of cortical selectivity; such models could prove useful in future applications of fMRI pattern classification.