Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Self-awareness and action.

Sarah Jayne Blakemore1, Chris Frith

  • 1Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, WC1N 3AR, London, UK.

Current Opinion in Neurobiology
|May 15, 2003
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

The human dorsal anterior cingulate facilitates acceptance of unfair offers and regulates inequity aversion.

PLoS biology·2026
Same author

Sharing the World-A Social Aspect of Consciousness.

Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science·2025
Same author

Defining key concepts for mental state attribution.

Communications psychology·2024
Same author

What makes us social and what does it tell us about mental disorders?

Cognitive neuropsychiatry·2024
Same author

Consciousness beyond the human case.

Current biology : CB·2023
Same author

Opportunities and challenges for a maturing science of consciousness.

Nature human behaviour·2019
Same journal

Cichlid fish as a model for understanding social dysfunction.

Current opinion in neurobiology·2026
Same journal

On aims and methods in field neuroethology: Investigating neural mechanisms of behavior in semi-natural and natural contexts.

Current opinion in neurobiology·2026
Same journal

Neurobiological interfaces connecting environmental change to monarch butterfly migration.

Current opinion in neurobiology·2026
Same journal

Learning how to experience the world: From circuits to cell types to genes.

Current opinion in neurobiology·2026
Same journal

Editorial overview for neurobiology of disease 2026.

Current opinion in neurobiology·2026
Same journal

Optical voltage imaging: ready to spark systems neuroscience.

Current opinion in neurobiology·2026
See all related articles

We are aware of our actions because our brain predicts their sensory consequences. This prediction helps us distinguish self-generated actions, with the parietal cortex being key to this awareness.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Neuroscience of Action Awareness

Background:

  • Understanding the sense of agency is fundamental to cognitive neuroscience.
  • The mechanisms underlying the awareness of self-generated actions remain an active area of research.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review evidence on how the brain distinguishes self-generated actions from external events.
  • To explore the neural basis of action awareness, focusing on the role of predictive mechanisms and brain regions.

Main Methods:

  • Review of behavioral studies examining action perception and agency.
  • Analysis of functional neuroimaging (fMRI) data.
  • Examination of patient studies in neurological and psychiatric conditions.

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Behavioral data suggest sensory predictions of movement consequences are crucial for labeling actions as self-generated.
  • Functional neuroimaging implicates the parietal cortex in the awareness of action.
  • Studies of patients reveal the parietal cortex's critical role in action awareness.

Conclusions:

  • The predictive processing of sensory consequences is a likely mechanism for generating the sense of agency.
  • The parietal cortex is a key neural substrate for the awareness of self-generated actions.