Thought consciousness and source monitoring depend on robotically controlled sensorimotor conflicts and illusory states
Andrea Serino,
Polona Pozeg,
Fosco Bernasconi,
Marco Solcà,
Masayuki Hara,
Pierre Progin,
Giedre Stripeikyte,
Herberto Dhanis,
Roy Salomon,
Hannes Bleuler,
Giulio Rognini,
Olaf Blanke
Affiliations
Andrea Serino
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Campus Biotech, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1012 Geneva, Switzerland; MySpace Lab, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland
Polona Pozeg
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Campus Biotech, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1012 Geneva, Switzerland
Fosco Bernasconi
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Campus Biotech, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1012 Geneva, Switzerland
Marco Solcà
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Campus Biotech, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1012 Geneva, Switzerland
Masayuki Hara
Control Engineering Laboratory, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama University, Saitama, 338-8570, Japan
Pierre Progin
Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), University of Lausanne (UNIL), Lausanne, Switzerland; Service of General Psychiatry, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), University of Lausanne (UNIL), Lausanne, Switzerland
Giedre Stripeikyte
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Campus Biotech, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1012 Geneva, Switzerland
Herberto Dhanis
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Campus Biotech, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1012 Geneva, Switzerland
Roy Salomon
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Campus Biotech, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1012 Geneva, Switzerland; Gonda Brain Research Center, Bar-IIan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Hannes Bleuler
Laboratory of Robotic Systems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
Giulio Rognini
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Campus Biotech, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1012 Geneva, Switzerland; Laboratory of Robotic Systems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
Olaf Blanke
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland; Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Sciences, Campus Biotech, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1012 Geneva, Switzerland; Service de Neurologie, University Hospital Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Corresponding author
Summary: 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.
