Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on May 8, 2007
Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(2):254-261; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm050
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The Angular Gyrus Computes Action Awareness Representations
1 Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, 69675 Lyon, France, 2 Lewis Center for Neuroimaging & Psychology Department University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1228, USA, 3 Dartmouth Brain Imaging Center, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755-3569, USA, 4 Department of Physical Therapy, New York University, New York, NY 10010, USA, 5 Social Cognition Laboratory, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, Scotland, 6 Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA, 7 Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, USA
Address correspondence to: Chlöé Farrer, Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive, UMR 5229 CNRS, 67 Bd Pinel, 69675 Bron, France. Email: farrer{at}isc.cnrs.fr.
Involvement of the right inferior parietal area in action awareness was investigated while taking into account differences in the conscious experiences of one's own actions; especially, the awareness that an intended action is consistent with movement consequences and the awareness of the authorship of the action (i.e., the sense of agency). We hypothesized that these experiences are both associated with processes implemented in inferior parietal cortex, specifically, right angular gyrus (Ag). Two blood-oxygenation-level–dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies employed a novel delayed visual feedback technique to distinguish the neural correlates of these 2 forms of action awareness. We showed that right Ag is associated with both awareness of discrepancy between intended and movement consequences and awareness of action authorship. We propose that this region is involved in higher-order aspects of motor control that allows one to consciously access different aspects of one's own actions. Specifically, this region processes discrepancies between intended action and movement consequences in such a way that these will be consciously detected by the subject. This joint processing is at the core of the various experiences one uses to interpret an action.
Key Words: action • agency • fMRI • inferior parietal lobule • internal model