Premotor-hippocampal connectivity at encoding links the sense of self in the past and present
Presented During:
Thursday, June 26, 2025: 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Room:
P2 (Plaza Level)
Poster No:
835
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Nathalie Heidi Meyer1, Lucas Burget1, Baptiste Gauthier1, Jevita Potheegadoo1, Juliette Boscheron1, Olaf Blanke1
Institutions:
1Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Geneva, Switzerland
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Autonoetic consciousness (ANC), the ability to re-experience a personal past event is at the crossroad between episodic memory and self-consciousness in the act of remembering (Klein and Nichols, 2012; Tulving, 1985). Bodily self-consciousness (BSC), defined as a unitary sense of self within the bodily boundaries, arises from multisensory and sensorimotor perceptual mechanisms of specific bodily signals (Blanke et al., 2015), and has been argued to be the missing link joining self-conscious sensorimotor context during encoding with later conscious re-living of the encoded event (ANC,Bergouignan, 2021; Gauthier et al., 2020;Iriye and Ehrsson, 2022; Meyer et al., 2024). However, how BSC and its related subjective experience at encoding affect ANC at the neural level remains unknown. In this study, we addressed this question by modulating sensorimotor context and its related BSC (through sense of agency -SoA-, and sense of body ownership - SoO) during the encoding of virtual scenes while simultaneously recording brain activity using fMRI at encoding.
Methods:
We tested 24 participants who lay in an MR scanner and repeatedly moved their right hand vertically while encoding three scenes and a virtual body in virtual reality. Each scene varied in visuomotor and perspectival congruency with the virtual body's movements (1PP synchronous – SYNCH1PP, 1PP asynchronous – ASYNCH1PP, 3PP asynchronous – ASYNCH3PP) to modulate BSC (measured through SoO and SoA ratings). ANC was assessed one week later using a 28-item questionnaire. We computed a generalized psychophysiological interaction analysis to investigate whether, during encoding, the functional connectivity between the left hippocampus (HC) and left dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC, Fig. 1A), two regions previously found to be sensitive to our BSC manipulation (Meyer & Gauthier et al., 2024), differ between conditions. Finally, we investigated whether ANC could be explained by the functional connectivity between left dPMC and left HC and its interaction with SoA and/or SoO using a linear mixed model. We applied the model to both the full score of ANC (the sum of the ratings across the 28 items), and to the subscore of ANC derived from a factor analysis (3 subscores). To control that the effect was specific to our experimental condition, we applied the same analysis using the regions reversed on the right hemisphere.
Results:
We found that irrespective of conditions, the functional connectivity between dPMC and HC was higher in the left hemisphere (contralateral to the hand movement) compared to the right hemisphere (estimate = -0.09, t = -3.6, p < 0.001), suggesting that the effect was due to our experimental manipulation. This was further supported by a significant difference of the functional connectivity between the left HC and left dPMC when comparing the SYNCH1PP and the ASYNCH3PP condition (Fig. 1B, estimate = -0.1, t = -2.47, p = 0.02). Finally, although the interaction between SoA/SoO and the functional connectivity between left dPMC and HC was not significant to explain the full score of ANC ( Fig. 1C, SoA: estimate = 0.33, t = 0.93, p = 0.35, SoO: estimate = 0.5, t = 0.53, p = 0.76), we found a significant interaction between the functional connectivity of the left HC and dPMC with SoA (estimate = 4.8, t = 2.39, p = 0.02) and SoO (estimate = 3.39, t = 2.64, p = 0.01) when we applied it to explain ANC subscores. Posthoc analysis of the interaction revealed that the positive relationship between SoA/SoO and ANC only holds when the functional connectivity is strong. This effect was specific to the movement performed at encoding (right hand movement) as we found no significant relationship between SoA and ANC when applying the same models with the functional connectivity of the right dPMC and HC, (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), presenting a new neural mechanism: premotor-hippocampal functional connectivity at encoding.
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Higher Cognitive Functions Other
Learning and Memory:
Long-Term Memory (Episodic and Semantic) 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural)
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI
Perception, Attention and Motor Behavior:
Consciousness and Awareness 2
Keywords:
Cognition
Consciousness
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Memory
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Abstract Information
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Provide references using APA citation style.
Blanke O, Slater M, Serino A (2015) Behavioral, Neural, and Computational Principles of Bodily Self-Consciousness. Neuron 88:145–166.
Gauthier B, Bréchet L, Lance F, Mange R, Herbelin B, Faivre N, Bolton TAW, Ville DVD, Blanke O (2020) First-person body view modulates the neural substrates of episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness: A functional connectivity study. NeuroImage 223:117370.
Iriye H, Ehrsson HH (2022) Perceptual illusion of body-ownership within an immersive realistic environment enhances memory accuracy and re-experiencing. iScience 25:103584.
Klein SB, Nichols S (2012) Memory and the Sense of Personal Identity. Mind 121:677–702.
Meyer & Gauthier, Stampacchia S, Boscheron J, Babo-Rebelo M, Potheegadoo J, Herbelin B, Lance F, Alvarez V, Franc E, Esposito F, Morais Lacerda M, Blanke O (2024) Embodiment in episodic memory through premotor-hippocampal coupling. Commun Biol 7:1–19.
Meyer* NH, Gauthier* B, Potheegadoo J, Boscheron J, Franc E, Lance F, Blanke O (2024) Sense of Agency during Encoding Predicts Subjective Reliving. eNeuro 11:ENEURO.0256-24.2024.
Tulving E (1985) Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne 26:1–12.