Prepared to stop: How sense of agency modulates inhibitory control

Sense of agency (SoA) is the subjective feeling of being in control of one’s actions and their effects. Many studies have elucidated the cognitive and sensorimotor processes that drive this experience. However, less is known about how SoA influences flexible cognitive and motor control. Here, we investigated the effect of SoA on subsequent response inhibition using two modified Go/NoGo tasks with EEG recordings. We manipulated participants’ SoA by varying the presence, predictability, and emotional valence of a visual outcome (happy or angry face) for a given motor action. Importantly, we investigated how this manipulation influenced participants’ responses to subsequent Go and NoGo signals. When participants unexpectedly did not receive any visible outcome following their action in trial n-1, they responded slower and less accurately to the Go signal but more accurately to the NoGo signal in trial n, regardless of the emotional valence of the expected action outcome. Furthermore, enhanced inhibitory tendencies were accompanied by reduced N2 and P3 amplitudes as well as reduced midfrontal theta enhancement, indicating that less top-down control is required for successful response inhibition under a low SoA. Our results suggest that feeling less in control makes it easier to implement inhibitory control. This finding supports the “motivation from control” theory and sheds new light on the role of SoA in goal-directed behavior.