TY - JOUR
T1 - Thought consciousness and source monitoring depend on robotically controlled sensorimotor conflicts and illusory states
AU - Serino, Andrea
AU - Pozeg, Polona
AU - Bernasconi, Fosco
AU - Solcà, Marco
AU - Hara, Masayuki
AU - Progin, Pierre
AU - Stripeikyte, Giedre
AU - Dhanis, Herberto
AU - Salomon, Roy
AU - Bleuler, Hannes
AU - Rognini, Giulio
AU - Blanke, Olaf
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors
PY - 2021/1/22
Y1 - 2021/1/22
N2 - Thought insertion (TI) is characterized by the experience that certain thoughts, occurring in one's mind, are not one's own, but the thoughts of somebody else and suggestive of a psychotic disorder. We report a robotics-based method able to investigate the behavioral and subjective mechanisms of TI in healthy participants. We used a robotic device to alter body perception by providing online sensorimotor stimulation, while participants performed cognitive tasks implying source monitoring of mental states attributed to either oneself or another person. Across several experiments, conflicting sensorimotor stimulation reduced the distinction between self- and other-generated thoughts and was, moreover, associated with the experimentally generated feeling of being in the presence of an alien agent and subjective aspects of TI. Introducing a new robotics-based approach that enables the experimental study of the brain mechanisms of TI, these results link TI to predictable self-other shifts in source monitoring and specific sensorimotor processes.
AB - Thought insertion (TI) is characterized by the experience that certain thoughts, occurring in one's mind, are not one's own, but the thoughts of somebody else and suggestive of a psychotic disorder. We report a robotics-based method able to investigate the behavioral and subjective mechanisms of TI in healthy participants. We used a robotic device to alter body perception by providing online sensorimotor stimulation, while participants performed cognitive tasks implying source monitoring of mental states attributed to either oneself or another person. Across several experiments, conflicting sensorimotor stimulation reduced the distinction between self- and other-generated thoughts and was, moreover, associated with the experimentally generated feeling of being in the presence of an alien agent and subjective aspects of TI. Introducing a new robotics-based approach that enables the experimental study of the brain mechanisms of TI, these results link TI to predictable self-other shifts in source monitoring and specific sensorimotor processes.
KW - Psychology
KW - Research Methodology Social Sciences
KW - Robotics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85098654842&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101955
DO - 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101955
M3 - Article
C2 - 33458614
AN - SCOPUS:85098654842
SN - 2589-0042
VL - 24
JO - iScience
JF - iScience
IS - 1
M1 - 101955
ER -