Repository logo

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
  1. Home
  2. Academic and Research Output
  3. Journal articles
  4. The limits of agency in walking humans
 
research article

The limits of agency in walking humans

Kannape, O. A.  
•
Schwabe, L.
•
Tadi, T.  
Show more
2010
Neuropsychologia

An important principle of human ethics is that individuals are not responsible for actions performed when unconscious. Recent research found that the generation of an action and the building of a conscious experience of that action (agency) are distinct processes and crucial mechanisms for self-consciousness. Yet, previous agency studies have focussed on actions of a finger or hand. Here, we investigate how agents consciously monitor actions of the entire body in space during locomotion. This was motivated by previous work revealing that (1) a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness concerns a single and coherent representation of the entire spatially situated body and (2) clinical instances of human behaviour without consciousness occur in rare neurological conditions such as sleepwalking or epileptic nocturnal wandering. Merging techniques from virtual reality, full-body tracking, and cognitive science of conscious action monitoring, we report experimental data about consciousness during locomotion in healthy participants. We find that agents consciously monitor the location of their entire body and its locomotion only with low precision and report that while precision remains low it can be systematically modulated in several experimental conditions. This shows that conscious action monitoring in locomoting agents can be studied in a fine-grained manner. We argue that the study of the mechanisms of agency for a person's full body may help to refine our scientific criteria of self-hood and discuss sleepwalking and related conditions as alterations in neural systems encoding motor awareness in walking humans.

  • Files
  • Details
  • Metrics
Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.02.005
Web of Science ID

WOS:000278261900010

Author(s)
Kannape, O. A.  
Schwabe, L.
Tadi, T.  
Blanke, O.  
Date Issued

2010

Publisher

Elsevier

Published in
Neuropsychologia
Volume

48

Issue

6

Start page

1628

End page

36

Subjects

Motor awareness

•

Self

•

Virtual reality

•

Motion capture

•

Sensorimotor

•

Sleepwalking

•

Of-Body Experience

•

Nocturnal Wanderings

•

Self-Consciousness

•

Schizophrenia

•

Locomotion

•

Gait

•

Recognition

•

Hand

•

Dissociation

•

Perception

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LNCO  
Available on Infoscience
November 12, 2010
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/57417
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Contact
  • infoscience@epfl.ch

  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Follow us on LinkedIn
  • Follow us on X
  • Follow us on Youtube
AccessibilityLegal noticePrivacy policyCookie settingsEnd User AgreementGet helpFeedback

Infoscience is a service managed and provided by the Library and IT Services of EPFL. © EPFL, tous droits réservés