Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, 6-3-09 Aoba, Aramaki-aza, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8579, Japan.
Japan Science and Technology Agency, Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology (PRESTO), 6-3-09 Aoba, Aramaki-aza, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8579, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 11;11(1):418. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-79910-x.
Awareness of the body is essential for accurate motor control. However, how this awareness influences motor control is poorly understood. The awareness of the body includes awareness of visible body parts as one's own (sense of body ownership) and awareness of voluntary actions over that visible body part (sense of agency). Here, I show that sense of agency over a visible hand improves the initiation of movement, regardless of sense of body ownership. The present study combined the moving rubber hand illusion, which allows experimental manipulation of agency and body ownership, and the finger-tracking paradigm, which allows behavioral quantification of motor control by the ability to coordinate eye with hand movements. This eye-hand coordination requires awareness of the hand to track the hand with the eye. I found that eye-hand coordination is improved when participants experience a sense of agency over a tracked artificial hand, regardless of their sense of body ownership. This improvement was selective for the initiation, but not maintenance, of eye-hand coordination. These results reveal that the prospective experience of explicit sense of agency improves motor control, suggesting that artificial manipulation of prospective agency may be beneficial to rehabilitation and sports training techniques.
对身体的意识对于精确的运动控制至关重要。然而，这种意识如何影响运动控制还知之甚少。对身体的意识包括对可见身体部位的自我意识（身体所有权意识）和对该可见身体部位的自愿动作的意识（代理权意识）。在这里，我表明对可见手的代理权意识可以改善运动的启动，而不管身体所有权意识如何。本研究结合了移动橡胶手错觉，该错觉允许对手和身体所有权的代理权进行实验操作，以及手指跟踪范式，该范式通过协调眼睛和手部运动的能力对手动控制的行为进行量化。这种眼手协调需要对手的意识才能用眼睛跟踪手。我发现，当参与者体验到对被跟踪的人造手的代理权意识时，眼手协调会得到改善，而不管他们的身体所有权意识如何。这种改善是针对眼手协调的启动，而不是维持。这些结果表明，明确的代理权的预期体验可以改善运动控制，这表明对预期代理权的人为操纵可能有益于康复和运动训练技术。
