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Virtual Hand with Ambiguous Movement between the Self and Other Origin: Sense of Ownership and 'Other-Produced' Agency
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Self-Agency and Self-Ownership in Cognitive Mapping
Shahar Arzy1, Daniel L Schacter2
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; Neuropsychiatry Laboratory, Department of Medical Neurobiology, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel; Department of Neurology, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|May 9, 2019
Summary
This study explores agency and ownership in cognitive maps, revealing their role in spatial representation transformations. Disruptions in these senses may link to memory disorders like Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neuropsychology
Background:
- Agency (sense of generating experience) and ownership (sense of undergoing experience) are key to understanding consciousness and body representations.
- These concepts have not been extensively applied to the domain of cognitive maps and spatial navigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the roles of agency and ownership in the context of cognitive maps.
- To examine how these concepts relate to the transformation between egocentric and allocentric spatial representations.
- To explore the implications of agency and ownership disruptions in neuropsychiatric disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Main Methods:
- Conceptual analysis applying agency and ownership to cognitive map representations.
- Examination of neurocognitive and computational mechanisms underlying these processes.
- Review of neuropsychiatric literature, focusing on memory disorders and potential disruptions in agency and ownership.
Main Results:
- Agency and ownership are integral to understanding the subjective experience of navigating cognitive maps.
- These concepts are relevant to the dynamic transformations between different spatial reference frames (egocentric and allocentric).
- Altered senses of agency and ownership may be a feature of cognitive impairments in conditions like Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Conclusions:
- Applying concepts of agency and ownership provides a novel framework for studying cognitive maps.
- Understanding these subjective experiences is crucial for elucidating spatial representation mechanisms.
- Further research into agency and ownership disruptions could offer insights into memory disorders and their treatment.
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