News Releases & Research Results Study quantifies the “sense of agency” by an optimal integration―Theory to reproduce psychological experiments in an integrated manner―

Results of research by Researcher Roberto Legaspi and Team Leader Taro Toyoizumi of the Laboratory for Neural Computation and Adaptation, RIKEN Center for Brain Science (at the time of research: , he was attached to RIKEN CBS–OMRON Collaboration Center).

• The research hypothesized that one’s perception of “causality” between one’s “action” and the subsequent "outcome" occurs as the result of optimal integration of multiple sensory signals (such as somatosensory and auditory perceptions), and proposed a new formula that quantifies the sense of agency ^(*).
  ^(*) Sense of agency: the perception that one is responsible for one's own actions and causes an external event by controlling these actions.
• The research results can be expected to contribute to the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders that affect the sense of agency and to be helpful in the design of next-generation devices that can facilitate efficient learning and continuing habits through boosting one's sense of agency.

This research was conducted with the support of Brain Mapping  by Integrated Neurotechnologies for Disease Studies by AMED.

The results of research were published on September 18 in Nature Communications, a British online scientific journal.

Legaspi R., et al. A Bayesian psychophysics model of sense of agency, Nature Communications
DOI：10.1038/s41467-019-12170-0