Studying the Effect of Hand Movement Visual Delay on the Sense of Agency

Abstract

Several virtual reality-based mirror visual feedback (VR-MVF) therapy systems have shown a positive effectiveness to reduce the pain severity in patients with chronic pain conditions. It is suggested that the effect of such systems is related to the restoration of the sense of agency (SoA) levels in those patients. In this study, we perform an EEG-based experiment to confirm the neural correlates of the SoA by introducing different visual delay levels to hand movement visual feedback. Seven volunteers have currently participated in this experiment. The participants perform hand movement and monitor their movement under different visual delays while recording EEG data. The participants are also asked to quantitatively rate their SoA whether the displayed movement is derived by the participant himself using a numeric scale. The results of the behavioral analysis have shown that the SoA is altered as the amount of delay applied to the visual feedback of the self-movement is increased. These results suggest that distraction in visual feedback can negatively affect the SoA.