The Thought From the Machine: Neural Basis of Thoughts With a Coherent and Diminished Sense of Authorship.
Schizophrenia bulletin October 21, 2021 Leonie Klock, Martin Voss, Markus Weichenberger et al.
Healthy participants experienced thoughts as self-generated when they believed a fake device was deactivated, and attributed thoughts externally when they believed the device was activated—an experience usually reported only by patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Distinct activations in the medial prefrontal cortex were observed: ventral mPFC activation linked to a sense of thought authorship and dorsal mPFC activation to a diminished sense of thought authorship. This functional differentiation corresponds to research on self- and other-oriented reflection processes and on patients with schizophrenia who show abnormal mPFC activation. Results support the notion that the mPFC might be involved in thought authorship and anomalous self-experiences.