0. Conscious Intention and Motor Cognition
Patrick Haggard, Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 290~295 ,2005
Seung-hyun Lee
Soft Computing Lab.

1. Contents Introduction Thought on intention: Past vs Present
Libet’s experiment
Action
Generation
Selection
Urge & effect
Linking urge to effect
Conclusion

2. A) Intention to move one’s arm
Introduction
Q) What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?’
A) Intention to move one’s arm
- prior intention
- intention in action

3. Past
Thoughts on intention
A computational framework for action

4. Thoughts on intention(cont’d)
Past
Thoughts on intention(cont’d)
Prevalent idea for action: Decartes
Mind
Action
Body

5. Thoughts on intention(cont’d)
Present
Thoughts on intention(cont’d)
Conscious experiences = consequences of brain activity
Why?
No direct nor strong tools for studying intention
Evasive conscious experience of intending
: lack of vivid quality of visual phenomena
Changes in dominant view
: action as conditioned responses to environmental stimuli

6. Libet’s Experiment
Setup

7. Libet’s Experiment(Cont’d)
Result
 Conscious intention is not the cause of action

8. Libet’s Experiment(Cont’d)
Possibilities
Conscious intention could be part of an illusion of mental causation, retrospectively inferred to explain behavior
Conscious intention could be an immediate consequence of the brain processes which prepare action

9. Libet’s Experiment(Cont’d)
Supporting experiments
Lau et al.
Used fMRI
Judging action vs judging intention
Greater activation on pre-supplementary motor area & intra-parietal sulcus for judging intentions
Sirigu et al.
Patients with focal cerebellar or parietal lesions
Parietal group showed delay in the awareness of conscious intention
Preparatory activity in the motor areas
Action
Conscious intention

10. Action Generation Features Two aspects of will Internal generation
Goal-directed. Intention through to the intended effect
== Ideomotor
Involving a pervasive process of information expansion
Two aspects of will
Internal generation
Ex) reflexes
Selection or choice between alternative possible actions

11. ? Action Selection Haggard and Eimer’ s study Selection process
Two subject groups: showing early and late judgement of intention
Readiness potential  W judgement (X)
Lateralised readiness potential  W judgement (O)
 Conscious intention is linked to the specific preparation to perform a particular movements
Selection process
Motor command
Conscious intention

12. Action Selection(cont’d)?
Selection process
Unconscious process
Studies
Ammon & Gandevia
: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation(TMS)  no awareness of altered responding
Brasil-Neto et al.
: TMS go signal  later responses were unaffected

13. Conscious Intention Urge Effect(Agency) Definition being about to move
Urge & Agency
Conscious Intention
Urge
Effect(Agency)
Definition
being about to move
prediction of the goal state
Neuron
motoric
sensory
Focus
internal
external
Corresponding theory
Libet's W judgement
Jame's ideomotor theory of action

14. Conscious Intention(Cont’d)
Urge
Conscious Intention(Cont’d)
Fried et al.’s experiment
Stimulations of the cerebral cortex via electronodes
Result
Feeling of an urge to move a specific body part during the low intensity stimulation
Real movement under higher stimulation
 conscious intentions are at least partly preconstructions rather than reconstructions

15. Conscious Intention(Cont’d)
Sense of Agency
Conscious Intention(Cont’d)
Reflexive feeling that ‘I’ control events in the outside world
Agency as an illusion of mental causation
Post-hoc reconstruction of agency
People can incorrectly infer agency based on repeated associations between events which are in fact unrelated
An experiment by Wegner and Weatley
Conscious thought
Thought-about
event
Action
Experience that I cause the event

16. Conscious Intention(Cont’d)
Sense of Agency
Conscious Intention(Cont’d)
Anarchic Hand Syndrome(AHS) by Marcel
Patients with frontal lobe and callosal damage
Perform well-formed actions in response to environmental cues
But actions are contrary to the patient’s will, and occur without preceding conscious intention
Della Sala et al’s supporting example
Two sources of actions
Ownership of action agency
Ownership of the source of action - urge

17. Conscious Intention(Cont’d)
Linking Urge to Agency
Conscious Intention(Cont’d)
Haggard et al.
Experiment: Indicate time of action and effect
Result

18. Conclusion It seems extremely HARD to apply in agent system
Studies on imitation
People typically imitate other’s goal
Not the movements they use to achieve them
Bekkering, H. et al., “Imitation of gestures in children is goal directed,” Q. J. Exp. Psychol. A 53, 153–164, 2000
Additional reference(decision making)
A. Dijksterhuis, et al., “On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect,” Science, vol. 311, no. 5763, pp

19. Thank you