Premotor-hippocampal connectivity and sense of agency during encoding predicts reliving of events
Poster No:
1056
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Nathalie Heidi Meyer1, Baptiste Gauthier1, Lucas Burget1, Jevita Potheegadoo1, Juliette Boscheron1, Elizabeth Franc1, Florian Lance1, Olaf Blanke1
Institutions:
1EPFL, Geneva, Switzerland
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Autonoetic consciousness (ANC), the ability to re-experience a personal past event has been theorized to link episodic memory and self-consciousness in the act of remembering (Klein and Nichols, 2012; Tulving, 1985). Although the sensory and the self-conscious aspects of ANC have been investigated separately, multiple pieces of evidence point towards an association of self-consciousness and sensory information when modulating ANC. Bodily self-consciousness (BSC), defined as a unitary sense of self within the bodily boundaries, has been shown to arise from multisensory and sensorimotor perceptual mechanisms of specific bodily signals (Blanke et al., 2015), and has been argued to be the missing link joining sensorimotor and self-conscious context during encoding with later re-living of the encoded event and ANC (Bréchet et al., 2019). However, how BSC and its related subjective experience at encoding affect ANC remains unknown. In this study, we addressed this question by modulating sensorimotor context and sense of agency (SoA) of participants during the encoding of virtual scenes while simultaneously recording brain activity using fMRI.
Methods:
We tested 73 young healthy right-handed participants, of which 24 participated to the experiment in the MR scanner during encoding. Participants encoded three different scenes in immersive virtual reality. Each scene was associated with a different BSC condition with a different level of visuomotor and perspectival congruency to modulate the SoA (1PP synchronous -SYNCH1PP, 1PP asynchronous – ASYNCH1PP, 3PP asynchronous – ASYNCH3PP). We assessed ANC one week later using a 28 items questionnaire.
We applied a linear mixed model to investigate whether we could explain the ANC by the interaction between the experimental conditions and the SoA score. We then computed a generalized psychophysiological interaction analysis (gPPI;using the CONN toolbox v20b) to investigate whether the encoding functional connectivity between the left hippocampus and left dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC), two regions previously found to be sensitive to our BSC manipulation (Meyer et al., 2023), differ between conditions. Finally, we investigated whether ANC could be explained by the functional connectivity between left dPMC and left hippocampus and its interaction with SoA using a linear mixed model. To control that the effect was specific to our experimental condition, we applied the same analysis using the regions reversed on the right hemisphere (using ImCalc from SPM12).
We applied a linear mixed model to investigate whether we could explain the ANC by the interaction between the experimental conditions and the SoA score. We then computed a generalized psychophysiological interaction analysis (gPPI;using the CONN toolbox v20b) to investigate whether the encoding functional connectivity between the left hippocampus and left dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC), two regions previously found to be sensitive to our BSC manipulation (Meyer et al., 2023), differ between conditions. Finally, we investigated whether ANC could be explained by the functional connectivity between left dPMC and left hippocampus and its interaction with SoA using a linear mixed model. To control that the effect was specific to our experimental condition, we applied the same analysis using the regions reversed on the right hemisphere (using ImCalc from SPM12).
Results:
At the behavioral level we found that the SoA during encoding predicted ANC score at 1 week (significant interaction between SYNCH1PP and ASYNCH3PP with SoA; estimate = -0.15, t = -3, p = 0.003). Post-hoc analysis applied separately on SYNCH1PP and ASYNCH3PP revealed a significant correlation between SoA and the ANC score, but only with preserved-normal visuomotor and perspectival congruency (SYNCH1PP: estimate = 0.13, t = 2.05, p = 0.04, ASYNCH3PP: estimate = -0.06, t = -1.27, p = 0.21).
Compatible with the behavioral results, we found that the functional connectivity between the left hippocampus and left dPMC during encoding significantly differed between the SYNCH1PP and the ASYNCH3PP condition (Figure 1B, estimate = -0.099, t = -2.47 , p = 0.02). Finally, we found a significant interaction between SoA and the functional connectivity of the left hippocampus and dPMC when we applied it to explain ANC scores (estimate = 4.8, t = 2.39, p = 0.02). Posthoc analysis of the interaction revealed that the positive relationship between SoA and ANC only holds when the functional connectivity is strong. We found no significant relationship between SoA and ANC when applying the same models with the functional connectivity of the right dPMC and hippocampus (estimate = 0.31, t = 0.55, p = 0.58).
Compatible with the behavioral results, we found that the functional connectivity between the left hippocampus and left dPMC during encoding significantly differed between the SYNCH1PP and the ASYNCH3PP condition (Figure 1B, estimate = -0.099, t = -2.47 , p = 0.02). Finally, we found a significant interaction between SoA and the functional connectivity of the left hippocampus and dPMC when we applied it to explain ANC scores (estimate = 4.8, t = 2.39, p = 0.02). Posthoc analysis of the interaction revealed that the positive relationship between SoA and ANC only holds when the functional connectivity is strong. We found no significant relationship between SoA and ANC when applying the same models with the functional connectivity of the right dPMC and hippocampus (estimate = 0.31, t = 0.55, p = 0.58).
Conclusions:
These results link the self in the present (BSC) with self in the past (ANC), through premotor-hippocampal functional connectivity at encoding.
Learning and Memory:
Implicit Memory 1
Long-Term Memory (Episodic and Semantic)
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural)
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Consciousness and Awareness 2
Keywords:
Cognition
Consciousness
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
S. B. Klein, S. Nichols, Memory and the Sense of Personal Identity. Mind 121, 677–702 (2012)
N. H. Meyer, B. Gauthier, S. Stampacchia, J. Boscheron, M. Babo Rebelo, J. Potheegadoo, B. Herbelin, F. Lance, V. Alvarez, E. Franc, F. Esposito, M. Morais Lacerda, O. Blanke, “Embodiment in episodic memory through premotor-hippocampal coupling” (preprint, 2023); https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.23.559108.