Neural mechanisms of awareness of action.
PNAS nexus July 1, 2026 David S Jin, Oumayma Agdali, Taruna Yadav et al.
Awareness of action (AoA)—the conscious awareness of one's own actions—is crucial for daily life, yet its neural basis is poorly understood. By developing a game where participants repeatedly made nearly identical moves while distracted, then reported awareness or unawareness of those moves, the authors compared neural activity between aware and unaware actions. On short timescales, aware actions showed larger neurophysiological signals both before and after movement, including volitional and perceptual event-related potentials, frontal midline theta, alpha/beta desynchronization, and increased blink rates. On longer timescales, a novel positive event-related potential preceded only unaware moves, and behavioral and pupillometric evidence indicated decreased attention and arousal concurrent with AoA loss. Three synergistic neural mechanisms were identified: long-term increases in arousal/attentional state, increased motor volitional signals, and increased sensory perceptual signals.