NCT03361332

The Sense of Agency

Behavioural and Neurofunctional Correlates of the Sense of Agency

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 50 (estimated)
• Sponsor: I.R.C.C.S Ospedale Galeazzi-Sant'Ambrogio · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: —

Summary

The ability to recognize of being the actors of the behaviour and its consequences, the so-called "Sense of Agency" (SoA), is a crucial component of self-awareness. One key aspect is the distinction from a mere inference about the causality between an act and its consequences and the sense of being the agent of it. Despite a large number of behavioural studies, there is unsatisfactory evidence on the functional anatomical underpinnings of the SoA and the distinction between causality and the SoA proper. Here, the investigators use an implicit measurement of the SoA and its modulations during fMRI: the intentional binding phenomenon (IB). The ivestigators also study how the SoA and the ensuing neurophysiological correlates are modulated by the presence of a movement disorders, such as Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome.

Conditions

• Motor Activity
• Motor Tic Disorders

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Behavioral and fMRI	Subjects and patients will perform temporal-judgment-tasks (considered an indirect measure of the sense of agency) in an event-related fMRI setting. In the first task, they will hear a sound either caused by a voluntary key press or by the passive displacement of the same finger by the experimenter. Following each trial, subjects will estimate the delay between the finger movement and the subsequent sound, which will be presented at variable latencies after the key press. There will be also control-trials characterized by the active or passive movement with a subsequent sound presented with a delay that excludes causality inferences.

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-04-08
• Primary completion: 2017-07-29
• Completion: 2020-01-23
• First posted: 2017-12-04
• Last updated: 2017-12-05

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Italy