Neural and cognitive bases of intentional action, conscious awareness and agency

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Actions can be made in response to changes in the environment, like for example, opening a door in response to the doorbell, or they can be made in the absence of environmental changes, like opening the door when leaving home. Historically, the study of human action has concentrated on the former class of actions (i.e., reactions), and as a result, our understanding of the processes governing intentional action is less complete. Another area of intentional action that is poorly understood relates to our conscious awareness of the actions we make and the sense of agency (feelings of authorship) for these actions. Early scientific psychologists placed great emphasis on understanding the nature of subjective mental states and their neurophysiological basis, and major works by early pioneers such as James and Wundt contained large sections devoted to various facets of consciousness (James, 1890; Wundt, 1874). The rise of behaviourism, however, led to a neglect of these issues for many years. Recently though, the study of consciousness has again taken centre stage (Lamme, 2006; Haynes & Rees, 2006; Rees, 2007). However, despite this recent resurgence of work, there is much that we don't understand, especially in the context of intentional action, conscious awareness and agency. This application outlines experiments that will address this dearth in our collective knowledge. There are two projects, one concerned with the mechanisms that mediate intentional motor preparation, and another focusing on the signals that give rise of conscious experience of action, and the factors that affect the sense of agency (SoA). Both projects will use a variety of techniques including behavioural measures such as subjective reports and reaction time, neuroimaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neural intervention such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). My aims are to construct an account of the neural representation of intentional actions, to shed light on how conscious awareness of action arises, and to improve our understanding of the various factors that produce our SoA.