Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Sarah Jayne Blakemore.
In this review we discuss how we are aware that actions are self-generated. We review behavioural data that suggest that a prediction of the sensory consequences of movement might be used to label actions and their consequences as self-generated. We also describe recent functional neuroimaging experiments and studies of neurological and psychiatric patients, which suggest that the parietal cortex plays a crucial role in the awareness of action.
Optimal motor control relies on internal representations of the actual, desired and predicted states of our limbs and the external world. Only certain components of these internal representations are available to awareness. We suggest that impairments of the components of internal representations might underlie a broad variety of neuropsychiatric symptoms, including the anarchic hand sign, phantom limbs, utilization behaviour and delusions of control.