Patients with schizophrenia who experience inserted thoughts report a diminished sense of thought authorship. Based on its elusive neural basis, this functional neuroimaging study used a novel setup to convince healthy participants that a technical device triggers thoughts in their stream of consciousness. Self-reports indicate that participants experienced their thoughts as self-generated when they believed the (fake) device was deactivated, and attributed their thoughts externally when they believed the device was activated—an experience usually only reported by patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Distinct activations in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) were observed: ventral mPFC activation was 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 thus support the notion that the mPFC might be involved in thought authorship as well as anomalous self-experiences.

中文翻译：

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来自机器的思想：具有连贯性和减弱的作者意识的思想的神经基础

经历过插入思想的精神分裂症患者报告说，思想作者意识减弱。基于其难以捉摸的神经基础，这项功能性神经影像学研究使用一种新颖的装置来说服健康参与者相信技术设备会触发他们意识流中的思想。自我报告表明，当参与者认为（假）设备被停用时，他们将自己的想法体验为自己产生的，而当他们认为设备被激活时，他们会将自己的想法归因于外部——这种体验通常只有被诊断患有精神分裂症的患者才会报告。观察到内侧前额叶皮层 (mPFC) 的不同激活：腹侧 mPFC 激活与思想作者身份感相关，而背侧 mPFC 激活与思想作者身份感减弱有关。这种功能分化对应于对自我和他人导向的反思过程以及对表现出异常 mPFC 激活的精神分裂症患者的研究。因此，结果支持 mPFC 可能参与思想作者身份以及异常自我体验的观点。