Whodunnit? Electrophysiological Correlates of Agency
Judgements
Simone Kühn1,2,3*., Ivan Nenchev3., Patrick Haggard2, Marcel Brass1, Jürgen Gallinat3, Martin Voss3
1 Department of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, and Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Ghent University,
Ghent, Belgium, 2 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom, 3 Department of Psychiatry and
Psychotherapy, St Hedwig Krankenhaus, Charité University Medicine, Berlin, Germany
Abstract
Sense of agency refers to the feeling that ‘‘I’’ am responsible for those external events that are directly produced by one’s
own voluntary actions. Recent theories distinguish between a non-conceptual ‘‘feeling’’ of agency linked to changes in the
processing of self-generated sensory events, and a higher-order judgement of agency, which attributes sensory events to
the self. In the current study we explore the neural correlates of the judgement of agency by means of electrophysiology.
We measured event-related potentials to tones that were either perceived or not perceived as triggered by participants’
voluntary actions and related these potentials to later judgements of agency over the tones. Replicating earlier findings on
predictive sensory attenuation, we found that the N1 component was attenuated for congruent tones that corresponded to
the learned action-effect mapping as opposed to incongruent tones that did not correspond to the previously acquired
associations between actions and tones. The P3a component, but not the N1, directly reflected the judgement of agency:
deflections in this component were greater for tones judged as self-generated than for tones judged as externally
produced. The fact that the outcome of the later agency judgement was predictable based on the P3a component
demonstrates that agency judgements incorporate early information processing components and are not purely
reconstructive, post-hoc evaluations generated at time of judgement.
Citation: Kühn S, Nenchev I, Haggard P, Brass M, Gallinat J, et al. (2011) Whodunnit? Electrophysiological Correlates of Agency Judgements. PLoS ONE 6(12):
e28657. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028657
Editor: Manos Tsakiris, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom of America
Received July 13, 2011; Accepted November 12, 2011; Published December 14, 2011
Copyright: ß 2011 Kühn et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: SK is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). MV is supported by the ‘‘European Platform for Life Sciences, Mind Sciences,
and the Humanities’’ grant by the Volkswagen Stiftung. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation
of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* E-mail:
[email protected]
. These authors contributed equally to this work.
agency could depend on sensorimotor signals generated at the
time of agency that is also relevant for the feeling of agency.
Attributional judgements of agency would then make use of
information from those lower level feelings of agency.
Interestingly, to our knowledge no study has directly investigated whether sensory processing involved in the feeling of agency
could form the basis of judgements of agency. However, it has
been proposed that internal forward models may provide an
internal prediction that can be used to distinguish between selfand externally-generated sensory events [6–8], and thus establish
agency. Forward models use an ‘‘efference copy’’ of the motor
command to predict the consequences of actions, thus increasing
the salience of sensations with an external cause relative to selfgenerated sensations [9]. Such sensory attenuation has been found
in the sensorimotor domain (e.g. [10,11]) as well as in the auditory
domain (e.g. [12]). An electrophysiological marker of sensory
attenuation in the auditory domain is the N1 component [12–14].
Another prominent but slightly later electrophysiological marker
that is sensitive to the detection of unexpected, ‘‘odd’’ or target
events is the P3 component that occurs around 300 ms after tone
onset [15–17]. Since participants knew in advance that they would
have to judge who caused the tone, tones that feel ‘‘odd’’ or slightly
unexpected could be the ones that are later attributed to somebody
else.
Introduction
Humans possess a sense of agency, which is a central aspect of
voluntary action. Sense of agency refers to the experience that one
is the agent of one’s own actions. This provides us with the feeling
of control, and may also be the basis of our wider understanding of
physical causation (Maine de Biran quoted in [1], p. 11). In
addition, sense of agency accompanies the human capacity to
detect and distinguish whether sensory signals are the result of selfgenerated actions or other environmental events [2]. Recently, a
two-step account of agency has been proposed. In the first step,
different agency indicators lead to a feeling of agency. In a second
step this feeling of agency is then processed by conceptual modules
to make judgements of attribution [3,4]. One might speculate
about the relations between feeling of agency and judgement of
agency. Both could be based on independent processes in different
brain regions that do not interact with one another, e.g. feeling of
agency might be based on brain regions involved in basic motor or
auditory processes whereas the judgement of agency might be
based on brain regions such as parietal association cortex [5]. If
both processes were independent one would predict no relation
between feeling of agency and judgement of agency. One would
then call the outcome of the later judgement a confabulation or
post-hoc reconstruction. On the other hand the judgement of
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Neural Correlates of Agency Judgements
written informed consent. The study was approved by the ethics
committee at Charité University Hospital and conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants had normal or
corrected-to-normal vision. All the participants were neurologically and psychiatrically healthy. Participants were paid for their
participation.
It is common to discriminate between a P3a and a P3b [18]. A
parietocentral P3b is elicited by task-relevant deviant stimuli that
are attended to, such as response targets, whereas deviant stimuli
that are odd or more salient elicit a slightly earlier positive
deflection that has a frontocentral scalp topography the so-called
P3a. The P3a has been interpreted as neural correlate of the
orienting response [19], We did not expect changes in the range of
the P3b because every tone was a target in the sense that
participants had to judge them and the P3b is usually observed
when only a few responses are required and a whole train of
stimuli is presented.
In contrast to the modality-specific N1 that is usually classified
as an ‘‘exogenous’’ unconscious ERP component, the P3a has
been implicated in event detection processes in and is considered
as a so-called ‘‘endogenous’’ and component associated with
conscious attention processes [17]. We consider both, the N1 as
well as the P3 as markers of early agency processing that underly
the feeling of agency.
We set out to investigate whether or not explicit judgements of
agency, that are assessed considerably later in time than the action
and its effects in the environment, are based on information
processing at the time of the actual event. Specifically, we explored
N1 and P3a potentials to action-effect tones, as potential
electrophysiological markers of first-step feeling of agency processing. N1 reflecting unconscious sensorimotor processes and P3a
reflecting early conscious stimulus processes reflecting expectancies
and oddness. If the physiological markers predict the outcome of the
later agency judgement, this suggests that agency judgements draw
on information of lower level feelings of agency. To explore this
question, we used a task in which participants were asked to press
keys that elicit effects in the environment [2]. First participants
learned a mapping between right and left button presses and the
associated high or low tone that their actions elicited. Then they
were told that in the following phase of the experiment the tones
they hear could either be the result of their own button press, or
produced by one of the experimenters who was performing the
same task in parallel. Actually the tones were always randomly
generated by the computer and presented after the button press of
the participant. After each tone, participants had to provide a
judgement of agency, by rating on a visual analogue scale the extent
to which they felt that they or the experimenter produced the tone.
The tones were either congruent or incongruent to the previously
learned association, and were presented with different temporal
delays to evoke uncertainty over who caused the outcome.
To demonstrate the classical sensory attenuation effect and to
provide evidence that the action to tone mapping has been learned
in the training phases we planned to compare tones that were
congruent and incongruent to the associated mapping. To
investigate the extent to which agency judgements incorporate
early information processing components as reflected in the toneelicited N1 and the P3a we divided trials according to whether the
subsequent judgement indicated a self- or externally-generated tone.
If explicit judgements of agency are mere retrospective confabulations at the time of judgement, unrelated to tone processing, then
auditory evoked potentials should be identical in self- and
externally-generated conditions. In contrast, a predictive account
of agency would assume that ERPs are attenuated for tones that are
subsequently explicitly judged to be self-generated.
Procedure
The participants were seated in a comfortable armchair in a
dim sound-attenuated room. Visual stimuli were presented on a
computer screen and auditory stimuli via headphones. The
experimental design was based on Sato and Yasuda [2]. At the
beginning of the experiment, participants performed 300
training trials to learn the relationship between actions and
their consequences (Figure 1). Participants were instructed to
press the left button (left Alt key on a key board) with the left
index finger and the right button (right Alt key) with the right
index finger in random order whenever a white square was
presented for 200 ms on the screen. After each button press, a
400 Hz or a 800 Hz tone was presented after 100 ms for
200 ms. The inter-trial interval varied between 2000, 2500 and
3000 ms duration. The assignment of buttons to tones was
consistent for each participant, but counterbalanced across
participants. Then the EEG cap was put on and the actual
experiment started. Participants were instructed to freely choose
between pressing the right or left button whenever a white
square was presented on the screen (as in the learning phase).
They were told that tones could be either produced by
themselves (as in the learning phase) or by the experimenter
who was seated in front of a computer behind a folding screen.
In reality, the experimenter did not produce any action–effects,
but all tones were generated by the computer and presented with
a specific delay after the button press of the participant. In the
congruent tone condition, each button press evoked the same tone
that had followed right and left button press in the learning
session. By contrast, in the incongruent tone condition, a tone that
differed from the predicted tone followed the button press.
Moreover, the onset of the tone was manipulated and varied
between 100 ms, 300 ms and 600 ms. Conguency and delay was
manipulated to evoke uncertainty about self-agency. After each
trial and a delay of 3000 ms, participants had to judge on a
visual analogue rating scale by means of a computer mouse, if
they produced the action–effect or the experimenter did (‘‘Who
produced the tone?’’,1 = ‘‘Me’’, 100 = ‘‘Somebody else’’). Each
of the six experimental blocks consisted of 60 trials. After each
even experimental block, a short period of the training phase (20
trials) was repeated to refresh the action-effect mapping. After
each block participants were allowed a short break.
Electrophysiological Recordings
Brainwaves were measured with 31 electrodes mounted in an
elastic electrode cap (EASYCAP) according to a modified 10–20
setting (with the electrodes Fp1, Fp2, F7, F3, Fz, F4, F8, FC5,
FC6, FC1, FC2, T7, C3, Cz, FCz, C4, T8, TP9, CP5, CP1, CP2
CP6, TP10, P7, P3, Pz, P4, P8, O1, Oz, O2). EEG signals were
referenced to FCz. Impedances of the electrodes were kept below
4 KV. The electrooculogram (EOG) was recorded with bipolar
montage. The vertical EOG was measured with two electrodes
placed above and below the left eye. The signal was re-referenced
offline to the average signal of the electrodes placed on the left and
right mastoid. The sampling rate was 512 Hz for all electrodes.
The continuous EEG was filtered off-line with a band pass filter of
0.1–30 Hz.
Methods
Participants
Seventeen participants (age range: 22 to 51 years, mean 33.5
years, 9 female, 8 male) participated in the experiment and gave
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Figure 1. Schematic Drawing of the experimental design.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028657.g001
Our analysis first focused on differences between congruent and
incongruent tones across all trials, including three different tone
onsets (100 ms, 300 ms and 600 ms).
Secondly, in order to assess tone-related differences based on
the outcome of the agency judgements, we divided all trials with
congruent tones presented with a medium delay (300 ms) into
those rated as self-produced vs. experimenter-produced according to a
median split on the agency scale. This analysis focuses on
congruent tones presented medium delay, because the uncertainty
of agency is considerably high and error processing based on
incongruency of tone identity can be excluded.
Data Analysis
EEG data were analyzed using BrainVision Analyzer
(MES, Munich). ERPs were time-locked to the onset of the tone
with a time-window (segmentation) from 2200 to 1000 ms.
Baseline correction was performed for the time frame of 2200 to
0 ms. Segments were removed from the analysis if the standard
deviation of any scalp electrode exceeded 620 mV within a sliding
time window of 200 ms or if the standard deviation of the EOG
within the same time window exceeded 640 mV. The remaining
artifact free segments were averaged separately for the different
conditions (see below).
ERP.
Figure 2. Behavioral effects of agency judgement. Error bars depict standard error of the mean.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028657.g002
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The amplitude of the N1 was determined in the averaged
segments as the mean within the time window of 110 to 130 ms
following tone onset. The amplitude of the P3a was determined
mean within the time window of 370–390 ms post stimulus and
expressed as mV.
Our main interest was on the N1 and P3a in a fronto-central
ROI (comprising electrodes F3, Fz, F4, FC1, FCz, FC2 –
measured as a mean amplitude across these electrodes [13,20]).
Based on our a priori hypotheses that incongruent tones should
elicit a bigger N1 than congruent tones and the hypothesis that
tones ascribed to the experimenter should elicit an enhanced
amplitude in N1 or P3a compared to self-ascribed tones, we
conducted two repeated measures ANOVAs: (1) One comprising
the factors component (N1 vs. P3a) and condition (congruent vs.
incongruent tones); (2) the other comprising the factors component
(N1 vs. P3a) and condition (tones attributed to ‘‘me’’ vs. tones
attributed to ‘‘somebody else’’). The assignment of trials to the
condition ‘‘me’’ or ‘‘somebody else’’ were confined to trials with
congruent tones and of medium delay (300 ms) because this
condition involved most ambiguity and were defined by a median
split of all agency judgements in this condition of each participant.
Results
Behavioral Results
The rating scores on the agency scale were analyzed using a
repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the factor
tone congruency (congruent vs. incongruent) and delay (100, 300,
600 ms). This analysis revealed a main effect of tone congruency
(F(1,16) = 5.65, p,0.05) and a main effect of delay (F(2,32) = 10.34,
p,0.001) (Figure 2). No interaction between tone congruency and
delay was found (F(2,32) = .15, p = .86). The main effect of tone
congruency was based on stronger self-agency (‘‘me’’) judgements
when actual and predicted tones were congruent compared to
incongruent. The main effect of delay was based on a reduction of
self-agency (‘‘me’’) judgements with increasing delays.
ERP Results
The tone-locked ERPs are plotted in Figure 3. The repeated
measures ANOVA comparing N1 and P3a amplitudes in response
to congruent and incongruent tone condition across all delays
revealed a main effect of component (F(1,16) = 94.46, p,0.001)
and a significant interaction of the factors component and
Figure 3. Tone-locked ERPs of ‘‘me’’ vs. ‘‘somebody else’’ agency judgement on frontal electrodes (in congruent condition with
medium delay).
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028657.g003
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The N1 component is elicited by auditory stimuli and assumed to
be generated in auditory cortex [21,22]. It has been shown that if
participants expect self-initiated auditory stimuli that are presented
after a fixed and therefore predictable delay the N1 component is
reduced compared to randomly presented tones [12–14]. Similarly
visual N1 attenuation has been shown when subjects compared to
a computer generated the visual action effect [23].
To explore the extent to which agency judgements incorporate
early information processing steps as reflected in the tone-elicited
N1 and the slightly later P3a, we divided identical congruent trials
presented with the medium tone delay according to judgements of
whether each individual tone was self- or externally-produced. If
feeling of agency and judgement of agency redraw on different
information and the judgement is solely based on reconstructive
confabulation at time of judgement one would predict no
systematic differences in ERPs elicited by the tone presentation,
whereas an account that assumes information flow from feeling of
agency to judgement of agency would predict an attenuation of
components whenever agency is attributed to the self. In line with
the latter account we found a stronger P3a component for tones
that were judged to be generated by somebody else (namely the
experimenter) compared to those judged to be generated by
oneself. The P3a is a prominent electrophysiological marker that is
sensitive to attention processes [15] it has been shown to be
augmented whenever unexpected or ‘‘odd’’ stimuli are presented,
while expected stimuli lead to an attenuated response (for an
overview [17]). Previous EEG studies have located the generators
of the P3 in the temporal or parietal lobe [24–26]. The observed
association between judgement of agency and the P3a is therefore
in line with a multitude of fMRI studies associating agency
processing with the temporo-parietal junction [5,27,28].
It has been shown previously that a P3a component can be
elicited without a concurrent N1 increase ([17]; dissociation of
MMN and P3a [29]) arguing against a strongly coupled chain of
auditory processing starting with N1 that is followed by a P3a. The
presence of an association between P3a and later agency
judgement in the absence of an N1 effect is in line with the
notion that these processing stages of N1 and P3a can at least
partly run independently. From the present data we cannot derive
condition (F(1,16) = 5.87, p,0.05) indicating a more pronounced
difference between congruent and incongruent tones for the N1
but not in the P3a component (Figure 4A). Post-hoc t-tests revealed
a significant difference between conditions in the N1 (t(16) = 2.32,
p,0.05) not in the P3a (t(16) = 20.92, p = 0.37). The presence of
sensory attenuation in the congruent compared to incongruent
tone condition shows that participants have learned the association
between button presses and resulting tones.
In contrast to this a similar analysis based on the judgements
revealed a main effect of component (F(1,16) = 84.54, p,0.001)
and a significant interaction of the factors component and
condition (F(1,16) = 5.45, p,0.05) indicating a more pronounced
difference between ‘‘me’’ and ‘‘somebody else’’ judgements for the
P3a but not for the N1 amplitude (Figure 4B). Post-hoc t-tests
revealed a significant difference between conditions for P3a
amplitude with the ‘‘me’’ ERPs being attenuated compared to
the ‘‘somebody else’’ judgements (t(16) = 22.13, p,0.05) but not
in the N1 amplitude (t(16) = 20.03, p = 0.98). This finding
indicates that the judgement of agency does not draw on early
sensory attenuation processes in the range of the N1 but onto later
possibly more cognitive mechanisms reflected in the P3a.
Discussion
The current study set out to test whether differential
electrophysiological responses in response to events predict later
explicit agency judgements concerning these events. More specific,
we aimed at exploring whether agency judgements are related to
processes that take place immediately after the effect in the
environment has happened or whether agency judgements are
retrospectively constructed once the judgement has to be made.
To ensure that the action to tone mapping has been learned in the
training phases, we compared tones that corresponded to the
learned association between button presses and action-effects
(congruent) with tones that did not correspond to the learned
association (incongruent). In line with our hypothesis we found
sensory attenuation, namely a reduction of the N1 component for
congruent compared to incongruent tones, demonstrating that the
association of actions and action consequences has been learned.
Figure 4. Plots displaying mean signal averaged over electrodes F3, Fz, F4, FC1, FCz, FC2. (A) Interaction plot of component (N1 vs. P3a)
and condition (congruent vs. incongruent tones), (B) Interaction plot of component (N1 vs. P3a) and condition (‘‘me’’ vs. ’’somebody else’’ agency
judgement, median split in trials with congruent tones and delay 300 ms). * indicates a significant post-hoc t-test.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028657.g004
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Neural Correlates of Agency Judgements
why the participants ERPs sometimes seem to signal that an
identical tone is ‘‘odd’’ or unexpected, but we observed that the
occurence of an enhanced P3a predicts the attribution of the tone
to the experimenter. We speculate that the differences in the range
of the P3a after the physically identical congruent trials (tone delay
300 ms) are based on fluctuations of attention: on trials in which
participants are slightly distracted or engaged in mind wandering,
tones might have a higher probability of being perceived as
unexpected or ‘‘odd’’. Further research is needed in order to
explore the underlying psychological processes of the reduced P3a
that predicts the later self-agency judgement.
To summarize, the aim of the present study was to explore the
neural correlates of explicit agency judgements. Participants
learned that certain actions resulted in certain consequences in
the environment (tones). They were then introduced to an
ambiguous context in which they had to judge whether presented
tones where self-generated or externally produced. A comparison
of congruent and incongruent tones (with respect to the previously
learned associations) revealed a reduction of the N1 component for
congruent tones, showing that participants learned the mapping
and thus attenuated expected action effects. The outcome of a
later agency judgement was predictable based on a P3a
component demonstrating that agency judgements incorporate
early information processing components within the range of the
evoked potential and are not purely reconstructive post-hoc
evaluations generated at the time of judgement.
However, the agency judgements were not based on exogeneous, unconsious sensorimotor processes as reflected in the N1,
but on later endogeneous processes within the range of the P3a
possibly reflecting the detection of the tones’ unexpectedness or
oddness.
Author Contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: SK MV PH. Performed the
experiments: IN SK. Analyzed the data: IN SK. Contributed reagents/
materials/analysis tools: JG. Wrote the paper: SK MV IN PH JG MB.
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