THE INTEROCEPTIVE ACTIVE SELF (INTERACT): Investigating the relation between interoceptive awareness, subjective agency and sensorimotor skills

目前的项目是研究人类如何通过他们的身体来构建自己的表征（最小自我）。实验心理学和认知神经科学的研究已经区分了基于外部和内部身体的感觉运动经验的最小自我的几个方面，例如内部感觉（即内感受）和外部行为（即代理感）的感觉。尽管最近的理论贝叶斯框架将自我视为运动控制和自主控制过程之间的紧密耦合，但内感受和代理大多是孤立研究的。不幸的是，到目前为止，这两个基本自我维度之间的潜在相互作用还没有得到多少实验关注。目前的项目，INTERACT，将通过研究内隐自我意识的既定神经认知标记，如感觉运动衰减和心跳诱发电位，专注于内感受和行动之间的相互关系。在前两个子项目中，INTERACT将评估与运动动作相关的内部生理状态如何影响我们的代理感（子项目A），反之亦然，拥有代理感如何影响我们的内脏身体意识和体内平衡控制（子项目B）。第三个子项目(C)将评估这些信号（即体内和体外）及其整合如何允许灵活的目标导向行为。计划中的研究将通过应用认知心理学和神经科学的方法，如脑电图、外周生理学测量、心理物理学和健康志愿者的行为研究来实现他们的目标。拟议中的项目将成为调查“最小自我”的“优先计划”开创性呼吁的一部分，并将解决其五个关键问题中的三个。上述研究将对跨学科理解人类自我的动态本质具有重要的理论和临床意义。首先，自主信号及其在内脏和大脑之间的连续流动，可能提供了一个额外的、强大的窗口，可以深入了解自我构建的动态，如个人能动性，并用于测试人工代理中的“基于感觉的”自我表征。其次，内感受信号可能是代理状态对自我调节的功能意义的组成部分，这一可能性有望更好地解释灵活目标导向行为中的个体差异或个体波动，并可能导致开发新的治疗干预措施。这项研究的长期目标将是调查这些发现的临床意义。后一项努力将需要临床合作，这将在第一个资助期建立。

The current project investigates how humans are informed by their physical body to construct a representation of themselves (minimal self). Studies in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience have distinguished several facets of minimal selfhood that are based on sensorimotor experience of both the outer and inner body, such as feelings of internal sensations (i.e. interoception) and of outward actions (i.e. sense of agency). Despite recent theoretical Bayesian frameworks viewing selfhood as emerging from a tight coupling between processes of motor control and autonomic control, interoception and agency have mostly been studied in isolation. Unfortunately, potential interactions between these two fundamental dimensions of selfhood have received little experimental attention so far. The current project, INTERACT, will focus on the reciprocal relationship between interoception and action by investigating established neurocognitive markers of implicit self-awareness such as sensorimotor attenuation and heartbeat-evoked potentials. In the first two subprojects, INTERACT will assess how internal physiological states associated with motor actions influence our sense of agency (subproject A), and vice versa, how having a sense of agency affects back on our visceral body awareness and homeostatic control (subproject B). The third subproject (C) will assess how these signals (i.e. inside and outside the body) and their integration allows for flexible goal-directed behavior. The planned studies will aim to achieve their aims by applying methods from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, such as electroencephalography, peripheral physiology measures, psychophysics and behavioral studies in healthy volunteers. The proposed project will form part of the groundbreaking call of the Priority Programme for investigating minimal selfhood and will address three of its five key questions. The aforementioned studies will have significant theoretical and clinical implications for the understanding of the dynamic nature of human selfhood across various disciplines. First, autonomic signals, and their continuous flow between viscera and brain, may provide an additional, powerful window of insight into the dynamics of self-construction such as personal agency, and for testing "feeling-based" self-representation in artificial agents. Second, the possibility that interoceptive signals may be integral to the functional significance of agency states for self-regulation holds the promise of better explaining individual differences or individual fluctuations in flexible goal-directed behavior and may lead to developing new therapeutic interventions. The long-term objective of this research will be to investigate the clinical implications of these findings. This latter endeavor will require clinical cooperation which shall be established in the first funding period.