Modified feedback-control task for examining the relationship between sense of agency and motor control: a pilot study

Abstract

[Purpose] A sense of agency and feedback control may be related when the sensory feedback is attributed to the self; however, the relationship between sense of agency and movement disorders remains unclear. Although a feedback-control task might enable the examination of this relationship, it may be difficult for patients with movement disorders to complete this task. The present study modified the feedback-control task for future clinical research. [Participants and Methods] Twenty-four healthy adults participated in the study. The basic procedure followed that of a previous study in which participants traced a target line while receiving visual feedback of their actual or fake movement. The task was modified to reduce the width of the movement area, change the shape of the line from sinusoidal to horizontal, and reduce the number of trials from 45 to 15. [Results] When participants received the visual feedback of their actual movement, the movement error significantly decreased, whereas when participants received the fake movement that represented pre-recordings of their previous own movements, the movement error significantly increased. [Conclusion] The results partially agreed with those of the previous study. This modified task might help in examining the relationship between sense of agency and movement disorders in terms of motor control.

Dynamic Relationship between Sense of Agency and Post-Stroke Sensorimotor Deficits: A Longitudinal Case Study

“…Regarding the results of motor performance, the difference in movement errors between the SELF and OTHER conditions was observed in each experiment week. This result replicates that of the previous studies [15,16,32], suggesting that PA and PB correctly completed the movement tasks, just like the participants in their previous studies did. Although movement errors of PA were greater in the OTHER condition than those of PB, there were no obvious differences in movement errors across the second, fourth, and eighth weeks in the performances of PA and PB.…”

“…To confirm whether PA and PB completed the movement task correctly, we compared movement errors between the SELF and OTHER conditions. In this task, the movement errors in the SELF condition should be smaller than those in the OTHER condition [15,16,32]. Since differences in movement errors across cycles were not of interest, the average movement error for each condition across cycles was calculated (Figure 3).…”

Agency judgments in post-stroke patients with sensorimotor deficits

“…While you are tracing the target line, you have to judge whether the cursor movement reflects your own or another's movement by referring to the spatiotemporal consistency between your actual movement and the cursor's movement." Our pilot study confirmed that healthy adults were capable of formulating correct self-other attributions of cursor movement (i.e., no significant misattributions were observed) by performing four cycles of the horizontal movement [35]. Before the main experiment, participants were trained to enable the horizontal movement of their upper limb without compensatory movements of the trunk.…”