Implicit Agency in Observed Actions: Evidence for N1 Suppression of Tones Caused by Self-made and Observed Actions

Abstract

Abstract■ Every day we make attributions about how our actions and the actions of others cause consequences in the world around us. It is unknown whether we use the same implicit process in attributing causality when observing othersʼ actions as we do when making our own. The aim of this research was to investigate the neural processes involved in the implicit sense of agency we form between actions and effects, for both our own actions and when watching othersʼ actions. Using an interval estimation paradigm to elicit intentional binding in self-made and observed actions, we measured the EEG responses indicative of anticipatory processes before an action and the ERPs in response to the sensory consequence. We replicated our previous findings that we form a sense of implicit agency over our own and othersʼ actions. Crucially, EEG results showed that tones caused by either self-made or observed actions both resulted in suppression of the N1 component of the sensory ERP, with no difference in suppression between consequences caused by observed actions compared with self-made actions. Furthermore, this N1 suppression was greatest for tones caused by observed goal-directed actions rather than non-action or non-goal-related visual events. This suggests that top-down processes act upon the neural responses to sensory events caused by goal-directed actions in the same way for events caused by the self or those made by other agents. ■

ERP correlates of processing the auditory consequences of own versus observed actions

“…The paradigm used in the present study required button presses at regular intervals so that observers might have been able to predict the onset of the observed movement to some extent. The analysis of preaction potentials in the present study did not, however, reveal strong evidence of predictive mechanisms in observers, and the negativity preceding the observed action might also be interpreted as a contingent negative variability reflecting predictable stimuli (Kilner et al, 2004;Poonian et al, 2015). Moreover, the correlations between preaction potentials and the reduction of the N1 amplitude were far from reaching significance in both experimental groups (for opposite findings for active button presses, see Ford et al, 2014), as was the correlation between the variability of the timing of the observed button press and the N1 amplitude in observers.…”

“…This interpretation would be in line with the hypothesis that forward models might play a role also in action observation based on a simulation of the motor command (Wolpert et al, 2003). Similar predictive mechanisms for both action execution and observation have been recently suggested in an EEG study by Poonian et al (2015), in which an N1 suppression for processing the auditory consequences of observed actions was found. Poonian and colleagues, however, applied an interval estimation task to investigate intentional binding, in which a tone followed a self-performed or observed action after a variable delay of more than 500 up to 1,500 ms.…”

“…In this study, however, an interval estimation paradigm was applied to investigate intentional binding rather than sensory attenuation, and even if both phenomena are usually interpreted as resulting from forward models, there is some evidence that they are distinct (see Hughes et al, 2013, for a review). Importantly, selfproduced and observed actions preceded the tones by a long (> 500 ms) and variable interval in the applied intentional binding paradigm (Poonian et al, 2015), so that no conclusions concerning the processing of the direct auditory consequences of observed actions can be drawn from this study.…”

Physical and mental effort disrupts the implicit sense of agency

“…The N1 event-related potential is EFFORT DISRUPTS IMPLICIT AGENCY 31 suppressed in response to events that the participant themselves has caused (Caspar et al, 2016;Poonian, McFadyen, Ogden & Cunnington, 2015). This suppression is thought to index sense of agency due to top-down motor predictions causing a suppression of the processing of the effects of actions (Gentsch, Kathmann & Schutz-Bosbach, 2012).…”

Temporal Binding, Causation, and Agency: Developing a New Theoretical Framework

“…A quite different way of conceptualizing temporal binding has emerged in the context of some more recent studies that have demonstrated instances of temporal binding also occurring outside of the context of voluntary action, for instance when participants passively observed another person's button press followed by a tone (Poonian, McFadyen, Ogden, & Cunnington, 2015), when an experimenter pressed down the participant's finger to initiate the tone (Borhani, Beck, & Haggard, 2017; see also Buehner, 2015), or when the button was simply depressed by a machine (Buehner, 2012). It has been hypothesized that instances of temporal binding such as this are a top‐down effect on perception reflecting a belief in a cause–effect relation between the two observed events.…”