Having a Body versus Moving Your Body:

Objectives: Two important aspects of self-consciousness are the sense of one’s own body (socalled ‘body-ownership’) and the sense that one controls one’s own bodily actions (agency). The exact relation between these has been the focus of much speculation, but remains unclear. We distinguish two models of their relation. On an ‘additive’ model, agency and body-ownership are strongly related, because the ability to control actions is a powerful cue to body-ownership. This view implies a component common to the senses of body-ownership and agency, plus possible additional components unique to agency. An alternative ‘independence’ model holds that agency and body-ownership are qualitatively different experiences, triggered by different inputs, and recruiting distinct brain networks.