Hierarchical analysis of the sense of agency in schizophrenia: motor control, control detection, and self-attribution.

The sense of agency refers to the feeling of initiating and controlling one's actions and their resulting effects on the external environment. Previous studies have uncovered behavioral evidence of excessive self-attribution and, conversely, a reduction in the sense of agency in patients with schizophrenia. We hypothesize that this apparent paradox is likely to result from impairment in lower-level processes underlying the sense of agency, combined with a higher-level compensational bias.

Induction and stabilization of delta frequency brain oscillations by phase-synchronized rTMS and tACS.

Background: Brain oscillations in the delta frequency band have been linked with deep sleep and consolidation of declarative memory during sleep. However, the causal relationship of these associations remains not competely clarified, primarily due to constraints by technical limitations of brain stimulation approaches suited to induce and stabilize respective oscillatory activity in the human brain. The objective of this study was to establish a non-invasive brain stimulation protocol capable of reliably inducing, and stabilizing respective oscillatory activity in the delta frequency range.

Control over self and others' face: exploitation and exploration.

The face serves as a crucial cue for self-identification, while the sense of agency plays a significant role in determining our influence through actions in the environment. The current study investigates how self-identification through facial recognition may influence the perception of control via motion. We propose that self-identification might engender a belief in having control over one's own face, leading to a more acute detection and greater emphasis on discrepancies between their actions and the sensory feedback in control judgments.

The sensitivity and criterion of sense of agency.

The sense of agency, which refers to the subjective feeling of control, is an essential aspect of self-consciousness. We argue that distinguishing between the sensitivity and criterion of this feeling is important for discussing individual differences in the sense of agency and its connections with other cognitive functions.

Information Closure Theory of Consciousness.

Information processing in neural systems can be described and analyzed at multiple spatiotemporal scales. Generally, information at lower levels is more fine-grained but can be coarse-grained at higher levels. However, only information processed at specific scales of coarse-graining appears to be available for conscious awareness.

Information generation as a functional basis of consciousness.

What is the biological advantage of having consciousness? Functions of consciousness have been elusive due to the subjective nature of consciousness and ample empirical evidence showing the presence of many nonconscious cognitive performances in the human brain. Drawing upon empirical literature, here, we propose that a core function of consciousness be the ability to internally generate representations of events possibly detached from the current sensory input. Such representations are constructed by generative models learned through sensory-motor interactions with the environment.

Boredom-Driven Curious Learning by Homeo-Heterostatic Value Gradients.

This paper presents the Homeo-Heterostatic Value Gradients (HHVG) algorithm as a formal account on the constructive interplay between boredom and curiosity which gives rise to effective exploration and superior forward model learning. We offer an instrumental view of action selection, in which an action serves to disclose outcomes that have intrinsic meaningfulness to an agent itself. This motivated two central algorithmic ingredients: devaluation and devaluation progress, both underpin agent's cognition concerning intrinsically generated rewards.

Visual Perceptual Echo Reflects Learning of Regularities in Rapid Luminance Sequences.

A novel neural signature of active visual processing has recently been described in the form of the "perceptual echo", in which the cross-correlation between a sequence of randomly fluctuating luminance values and occipital electrophysiological signals exhibits a long-lasting periodic (∼100 ms cycle) reverberation of the input stimulus (VanRullen and Macdonald, 2012). As yet, however, the mechanisms underlying the perceptual echo and its function remain unknown. Reasoning that natural visual signals often contain temporally predictable, though nonperiodic features, we hypothesized that the perceptual echo may reflect a periodic process associated with regularity learning.

Fractionation of parietal function in bistable perception probed with concurrent TMS-EEG.

When visual input has conflicting interpretations, conscious perception can alternate spontaneously between these possible interpretations. This is called bistable perception. Previous neuroimaging studies have indicated the involvement of two right parietal areas in resolving perceptual ambiguity (ant-SPLr and post-SPLr).

The structure of inter-individual differences in visual ability: Evidence from the general population and synaesthesia.

This study considers how inter-individual differences in visual ability are structured. Visual ability could be a single entity (along the lines of general intelligence, or 'g'), or could be structured according to major anatomical or physiological pathways (dorsal v. ventral streams; magno- v.

Neural correlates of merging number words.

Complex number words (e.g., "twenty two") are formed by merging together several simple number words (e.

Cross-modal prediction changes the timing of conscious access during the motion-induced blindness.

Despite accumulating evidence that perceptual predictions influence perceptual content, the relations between these predictions and conscious contents remain unclear, especially for cross-modal predictions. We examined whether predictions of visual events by auditory cues can facilitate conscious access to the visual stimuli. We trained participants to learn associations between auditory cues and colour changes.

Big time is not always long: numerical magnitude automatically affects time reproduction.

To reproduce the duration of an event precisely, one needs to represent the temporal information without being influenced by other magnitude attributes (e.g., size) of the event.