Self-Agency and Self-Ownership in Cognitive Mapping

Abstract

The concepts of agency of one's actions and ownership of one's experience have proved useful in relating body representations to bodily consciousness. Here we apply these concepts to cognitive maps. Agency is defined as 'the sense that I am the one who is generating the experience represented on a cognitive map', while ownership is defined as 'the sense that I am the one who is undergoing an experience, represented on a cognitive map'. The roles of agency and ownership are examined with respect to the transformation between egocentric and allocentric representations and the underlying neurocognitive and computational mechanisms; and within the neuropsychiatric domain, including Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other memory-related disorders, in which the senses of agency and ownership may be disrupted.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; agency; memory; modeling; ownership; simulation.

Figure 1.. Egocentric and allocentric perspectives in space, time and person.

Illustration of egocentric (upper row) and allocentric (lower row) representations of the spatial, temporal and social world. Note that in both representations, the narrative-self is embedded within the environment, but how the represented objects are related to one another differs (see also Box 1; courtesy: Gregory Peters-Founshtein).

Figure 2.. From cognitive map to the narrative-self in the core network

A. Cognitive operations from cognitive map to the narrative-self. Self-agency and self-ownership mediate in between the cognitive maps and the narrative-self. These operations are contained within mental orientation, which relates the internal representation of the self to the external world. Both are included in the operation of constructive episodic simulation. B. From allocentric representation to the self in the core network. The flow from allocentric representation through agency and ownership to egocentric representation and the self is shown, in parallel to the corresponding regions in the “core network” of brain activity for episodic simulation (medial temporal lobe, posterior cingulate/retrosplenial cortex, lateral parietal and temporal cortex, and medial prefrontal cortex, respectively).

Figure 3.. Agency-ownership interaction model.

Modification of the model used by Wolpert et al. [60] is shown schematically, consisting of two processes. The agency-branch (up) uses self-originated (top-down) agency-derived priors and beliefs and the current generated cognitive map to predict the next version of the map using a forward model. The ownership-branch (bottom) uses one’s personal model of ownership and egocentric-allocentric translation (difference between the predicted allocentric map and the actual egocentric feedback perceived by path-integration and perceived world information) to correct the predicted map. The next generated map is dependent on these two processes (with different weighting). Circles represent operators along the model.

Figure I, Box 1:

Illustrations and realizations of ego- and allo-centric views