Pares Pujolras, Elisabeth;
(2019)
Endogenicity and awareness in voluntary action.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Preview |
Text
ParésPujolràs_PhDThesis_Final.pdf - Accepted Version Download (6MB) | Preview |
Abstract
The idea that we can trigger and control our actions at will is central to our experience as agents. Here, we investigated different cognitive mechanisms involved in voluntary action control. In the first part of the thesis, we investigated the relationship between motor preparation and awareness of intention. To do so, we used spontaneous action paradigms and combined them with novel random and real-time EEG probing techniques. We investigated two main questions. First, do people know that they are about to do something before they do it? Second, to what extent are delayed intention judgements informed by prospective motor preparation rather than retrospective reconstruction? Our findings suggest that people have some feeling of motor intention before acting and can use it to voluntarily control action initiation in real-time. However, their recall-based intention judgements are strongly influenced by overt events happening after the time of probing. Because most daily-life voluntary actions occur in interaction with the environment, in the second part of the thesis we embedded self-paced actions in a decision-making context. We investigated two ways in which endogenous factors can contribute to action selection. First, as a symmetry-breaking mechanism in contexts of external ambiguity. Second, by top-down modulating decision-making processes. We identified the neural correlates of an internal decision-variable that tracks perceptual decisions and also indexes dynamic changes in endogenous goals. Further, we show that the readiness potential can be found not only preceding spontaneous actions, but also in contexts where actions are informed by evidence but preserve a self-paced nature. In sum, this thesis provides new insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying conscious experience of intention and provides new tools to investigate voluntary control over action initiation and selection processes.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Endogenicity and awareness in voluntary action |
| Event: | UCL |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2019. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10087464 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
