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

动作可以响应于环境的变化而做出，例如响应于门铃而开门，或者它们可以在没有环境变化的情况下做出，例如离开家时开门。从历史上看，对人类行为的研究集中在前一类行为上（即，反应），因此，我们对支配有意行动的过程的理解不那么完整。另一个我们知之甚少的有意行动领域，是我们对自己所做的行动的有意识，以及这些行动的能动性（作者感）。早期的科学心理学家非常重视理解主观心理状态的本质及其神经生理学基础，早期先驱者如詹姆斯和冯特的主要著作中包含了大量专门讨论意识各个方面的章节（詹姆斯，1890;冯特，1874）。然而，行为主义的兴起导致了多年来对这些问题的忽视。然而最近，意识的研究再次占据了中心舞台（Lamme，2006; Haynes & Rees，2006; Rees，2007）。然而，尽管最近工作的复苏，有很多我们不理解的，特别是在有意的行动，有意识的意识和机构的背景下。这个应用程序概述了将解决我们集体知识中这种缺乏的实验。有两个项目，一个涉及的机制，介导有意的运动准备，另一个专注于引起有意识的行动经验的信号，以及影响代理感（SoA）的因素。这两个项目都将使用各种技术，包括主观报告和反应时间等行为测量，功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）等神经成像方法和经颅磁刺激（TMS）等神经干预。我的目标是构建一个关于有意行为的神经表征的解释，阐明对行为的意识是如何产生的，并提高我们对产生SoA的各种因素的理解。

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.