Functional Anatomy of the Sense of Agency: Past Evidence and Future Driections

Abstract

Until the past decade, the sense of agency received very little attention in the field of cognitive neuroscience, despite its relevance to a variety of psychiatric and neurological syndromes associated with abnormalities in the awareness of actions [1]. Yet, compared to other areas of interest in the fields of cognitive and social cognitive neuroscience, the number of studies that have recently investigated or are currently investigating the brain basis of agency can still be considered as minor to moderate. One reason may be that the sense of agency is a topic often left to philosophers and clinicians rather than empiricists; another reason may lie in the complex, multifaceted, and often ill-defined nature of the sense of agency. Nonetheless, advancing methodologies in cognitive neuroscience and conceptual refinements of the sense of agency along with the emergence of interdisciplinary fields such as neurophilosophy have opened up new, intriguing possibilities for investigating the brain basis of agency experience.