Pre-movement sensorimotor oscillations shape the sense of agency by gating cortical connectivity

Tommaso Bertoni (), Jean-Paul Noel, Marcia Bockbrader, Carolina Foglia, Sam Colachis, Bastien Orset, Nathan Evans, Bruno Herbelin, Ali Rezai, Stefano Panzeri, Cristina Becchio, Olaf Blanke and Andrea Serino
Additional contact information
Tommaso Bertoni: University Hospital Lausanne (CHUV)
Jean-Paul Noel: University of Minnesota
Marcia Bockbrader: The Ohio State University
Carolina Foglia: University Hospital Lausanne (CHUV)
Sam Colachis: Battelle Memorial Institute
Bastien Orset: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)
Nathan Evans: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)
Bruno Herbelin: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)
Ali Rezai: West Virginia University
Stefano Panzeri: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE)
Cristina Becchio: Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Olaf Blanke: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)
Andrea Serino: University Hospital Lausanne (CHUV)

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Abstract Our sense of agency, the subjective experience of controlling our actions, is a crucial component of self-awareness and motor control. It is thought to originate from the comparison between intentions and actions across broad cortical networks. However, the underlying neural mechanisms are still not fully understood. We hypothesized that oscillations in the theta-alpha range, thought to orchestrate long-range neural connectivity, may mediate sensorimotor comparisons. To test this, we manipulated the relation between intentions and actions in a tetraplegic user of a brain machine interface (BMI), decoding primary motor cortex (M1) activity to restore hand functionality. We found that the pre-movement phase of low-alpha oscillations in M1 predicted the participant’s agency judgements. Further, using EEG-BMI in healthy participants, we found that pre-movement alpha oscillations in M1 and supplementary motor area (SMA) correlated with agency ratings, and with changes in their functional connectivity with parietal, temporal and prefrontal areas. These findings argue for phase-driven gating as a key mechanism for sensorimotor integration and sense of agency.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58683-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-58683-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58683-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().