Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Minds and Machines
Published in: Minds and Machines 3/2013

01-08-2013

Did I Do That? Brain–Computer Interfacing and the Sense of Agency

Author: Pim Haselager

Published in: Minds and Machines | Issue 3/2013

Log in

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config
loading …

Abstract

Brain–computer interfacing (BCI) aims at directly capturing brain activity in order to enable a user to drive an application such as a wheelchair without using peripheral neural or motor systems. Low signal to noise ratio’s, low processing speed, and huge intra- and inter-subject variability currently call for the addition of intelligence to the applications, in order to compensate for errors in the production and/or the decoding of brain signals. However, the combination of minds and machines through BCI’s and intelligent devices (IDs) can affect a user’s sense of agency. Particularly confusing cases can arise when the behavioral control switches implicitly from user to ID. I will suggest that in such situations users may be insecure about the extent to which the resulting behavior, whether successful or unsuccessful, is genuinely their own. Hence, while performing an action, a user of a BCI–ID may be uncertain about being the agent of the act. Several cases will be examined and some implications for (legal) responsibility (e.g. establishing the presence of a ‘guilty mind’) are discussed.
previous article Causal Parity and Externalisms: Extensions in Life and Mind

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe




 

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now
Footnotes
1
Wegner refers to e.g. Geschwind et al. (1995). However, in the literature a more refined usage of terminology can be observed. E.g. Marchetti and Della Sala (1998) suggest to disentangle alien hand (the feeling of nonbelonging of a hand) from anarchic hand (complex goal-directed movements of a hand performed against the subject’s will, who is incapable of voluntary inhibiting them). More recently Aboitiz et al. (2003, p. 252) distinguish “at least five broad categories” subsumed under the alien hand label. Scepkowski et al. (2003) provide a detailed review of the neuroscientific data and the variety of assessment methods underlying the difficulty in establishing clear subtypes. See also further discussions of sense of agency in relation to schizophrenia (Daprati et al. 1997; Blakemore et al. 2002a, b, 2003), or automatisms (Bargh and Ferguson 2000; Bargh and Williams 2006). It is not the purpose of this paper to go into these issues in detail, so suffice it to say that, given Wegner’s usage of the alien hand case, the label ‘anarchic hand syndrome’ seems more appropriate.
 
2
Jason Farquhar, personal communication.
 
Literature
Aboitiz, F., Carrasco, X., Schröter, C. , Zaidel, D., Zaidel, E., & Lavados, M. (2003). The alien hand syndrome: Classification of forms reported and discussion of a new condition. Neurological Sciences, 24, 252–257.
Allison, B. Z., Wolpaw, E. W., & Wolpaw, J. R. (2007). Brain–computer interface systems: Progress and prospects. Expert Review of Medical Devices, 4, 463–474.CrossRef
Bargh, J. A., & Ferguson, M. (2000). Beyond behaviorism: On the automaticity of higher mental processes. Psychological Bulletin, 126(6), 925–945.CrossRef
Bargh, J. A., & Williams, E. L. (2006). The automaticity of social life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(1), 1–4.CrossRef
Birbaumer, N. (2006). Brain–computer-interface research: Coming of age. Clinical Neurophysiology, 117, 479–483.CrossRef
Blakemore, S.-J., Oakley, D. A., & Frith, C. D. (2003). Delusions of alien control in the normal brain. Neuropsychologia, 41(8), 1058–1067.CrossRef
Blakemore, S.-J., Wolpert, D. M., & Frith, C. (2002a). Abnormalities in the awareness of action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(6), 237–242.CrossRef
Blakemore, S.-J., Wolpert, D. M., & Frith, C. (2002b). Abnormalities in the awareness of action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 237–242.CrossRef
Botvinick, M., & Cohen, J. (1998). Rubber hands “feel” touch that eyes see. Nature, 391, 756.CrossRef
Crossley, R. (1992). Lending a hand—A personal account of facilitated communication training. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2, 18–21.
Daprati, E., et al. (1997). Looking for the agent: An investigation into consciousness of action and self-consciousness in schizophrenic patients. Cognition, 65, 71–86.CrossRef
de Vignemond, F., & Fourneret, P. (2004). The sense of agency: A philosophical and empirical review of the ‘who’ system. Consciousness and Cognition, 13, 1–19.CrossRef
Donoghue, J. P. (2002). Connecting cortex to machines: Recent advances in brain interfaces. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 1085–1088.CrossRef
Farwell, L. A., & Donchin, E. (1988). Talking off the top of your head: Toward a mental prothesis utilizing event-related brain potentials. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 70, 510–523.CrossRef
Gallagher, S. (2000). Philosophical conceptions of the self: Implications for cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), 14–21.MathSciNetCrossRef
Gallagher, S. (2007). The natural philosophy of agency. Philosophy Compass, 2(2), 347–357.
Geschwind, D., et al. (1995). Alien hand syndrome: Interhemispheric motor disconnection due to a lesion in the midbody of the corpus callosum. Neurology, 45, 802–808.CrossRef
Gettier, E. (1963). Is justified true belief knowledge? Analysis, 23, 121–123.CrossRef
Graiman, B., Allison, B., & Pfurtscheller, G. (2010). Brain-computer interfaces: A gentle introduction. In B. Graimann, B. Allison, & G. Pfurtscheller (Eds.), Brain–computer interfaces: Revolutionizing human–computer interaction. Berlin: Springer.
Guger, C., Daban, S., Sellers, E., Holzner, C., Krausz, G., Carabalona, R., et al. (2009). How many people are able to control a P300-based brain-computer interface (BCI)? Neuroscience Letters, 462, 94–98.CrossRef
Hindriks, K. V., Wiggers, P., Jonker, C. M., & Haselager, W. F. G. (2007). Towards a computational model of the self-attribution of agency. In: P. Olivier & C. Kray (Eds.), Proceedings of the artificial intelligence and simulation of behaviour annual convention 2007 (pp. 350–356).
Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, V., & Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310, 116–119.
Langer, E. J., & Roth, J. (1975). Heads I win, tails it’s chance: The illusion of control as a function of the sequence of outcomes in a purely chance task. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(6), 951–955. doi:10.​1037/​0022-3514.​32.​6.​951.CrossRef
Lau, H. C., Rogers, R. D., & Passingham, R. E. (2007). Manipulating the experienced onset of intention after action execution. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 1–10.CrossRef
Lebedev, M. A., & Nicolelis, M. A. (2006). Brain-machine interfaces: Past, present and future. Trends in Neurosciences, 29, 536–546.CrossRef
Lynn, M. T., Berger, C., Riddle, T.A., & Morsella, E. (2010). Mind control? Creating illusory intentions through a phony brain–computer interface. Consciousness and cognition, 19(4), 1007–1012.
Marchetti, C. & Della Sala, S. (1998) Disentangling alien and anarchic hand. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 3(3), 191–207.
Millán, J. D. R., Rupp, R., Müller-Putz, G. R., Murray-Smith, R., Giugliemma, C., Tangermann, M., et al. (2010). Combining brain–computer interfaces and assistive technologies: State-of-the-art and challenges. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 4(161), 1–15.
Moore, J., & Haggard, P. (2008). Awareness of action: Inference and prediction. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 136–144.CrossRef
Moore, J. W., Wegner, D. M., & Haggard, P. (2009). Modulating the sense of agency with external cues. Consciousness and Cognition, 18, 1056–1064.
Nijboer, F., Clausen, J., Allison, B. Z., & Haselager, W. F. G. (2011). The Asilomar survey: Stakeholders opinions on ethical issues related to brain–computer interfacing. Neuroethics. doi:10.​1007/​s12152-011-9132-6.
Pacherie, E. (2007). The sense of control and the sense of agency. Psyche, 13(1), 1–30.
Parikh, S. P., Grassi, V., Jr., Kumar, V., & Okamoto, J., Jr. (2007). Integrating human inputs with autonomous behaviors on an intelligent wheelchair platform. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 22(2), 33–41.CrossRef
Pfurtscheller, G., Allison, B. Z., Brunner, C., Bauernfeind, G., Solis-Escalante, T., Scherer, R., et al. (2010). The hybrid BCI. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 4(30), 1–11.
Pfurtscheller, G., Guger, C., Müller, G., Krausz, G., & Neuper, C. (2000). Brain oscillations control hand orthosis in a tetraplegic. Neuroscience Letters, 292(3), 211–214.CrossRef
Popescu, F., Blankertz, B., & Müller, K. -R. (2008). Computational challenges for noninvasive brain computer interfaces. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 23(3), 78–79.
Rebsamen, B., Burdet, E., Guan, C., Zhang, H., Teo, C., Zeng, Q., Laugier, C., & Ang, M. H., Jr. (2007). Controlling a wheelchair indoors using thought. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 22(2), 18–24.
Scepkowski, L. A., & Cronin-Golomb, A. (2003). The alien hand: cases categorizations and anatomical correlates. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Review, 2(4), 261–277.
Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2011). Lessons from Libet. In L. Sinnott-Armstrong & W. Nadel (Eds.), Conscious will and responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tonin, L., Leeb, R., Tavella, M., Perdikis, S., & Millán, J. D. R. (2010). The role of shared-control in BCI-based telepresence. 2010 IEEE international conference on systems, man, and cybernetics, Istanbu.
Tsakiris, M., Prabhu, G., & Haggard, P. (2006). Having a body versus moving your body: How agency structures body-ownership. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 423–432.CrossRef
Twachtman-Cullen, D. (1998). A passion to believe: Autism and the facilitated communication phenomenon. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
van Gerven, M., Farquhar, J., Schaefer, R., Vlek, R., Geuze, J., Nijholt, A., et al. (2009). The brain–computer interface cycle. Journal of Neural Engineering, 6(4), 1–10.CrossRef
Vlek, R., van Acken, J., Beurskens, E., Roijendijk, L., & Haselager, W.F.G. (in preparation). BCI and the sense of agency.
Wegner, D. (2003). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Wegner, D. M., Fuller, V. A., & Sparrow, B. (2003). Clever hands: Uncontrolled intelligence in facilitated communication. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(1), 5–19.
Wegner, D. M., Sparrow, B., & Winerman, L. (2004). Vicarious agency: Experiencing control over the movements of others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 838–848.CrossRef
Wheeler, D. L., Jacobson, J. W., Paglieri, R. A., & Schwartz, A. A. (1993). An experimental assessment of facilitated communication. Mental Retardation, 31, 49–60.
Wolpaw, J. R., Birbaumer, N., McFarland, D. J., Pfurtscheller, G., & Vaughan, T. M. (2002). Brain–computer interfaces for communication and control. Clinical Neurophysiology, 113, 767–791.CrossRef
Metadata
Title
Did I Do That? Brain–Computer Interfacing and the Sense of Agency
Author
Pim Haselager
Publication date
01-08-2013
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Minds and Machines / Issue 3/2013
Print ISSN: 0924-6495
Electronic ISSN: 1572-8641
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-012-9298-7

Other articles of this Issue 3/2013

Minds and Machines 3/2013 Go to the issue

OriginalPaper

Dynamics and Cognition

OriginalPaper

The Mark of the Cognitive

Introduction

Introduction to “The Material Bases of Cognition”

OriginalPaper

Constitution, and Multiple Constitution, in the Sciences: Using the Neuron to Construct a Starting Framework

OriginalPaper

Compositional Explanatory Relations and Mechanistic Reduction

OriginalPaper

Causal Parity and Externalisms: Extensions in Life and Mind

Premium Partner

    Image Credits