I am an Associate Professor in Psychology with a background in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and robotics. My research focuses on how people interact with their environment through actions and their bodies. The primary areas of interest in my lab are the sense of agency and body consciousness. I earned my PhD from the Department of Psychology at the University of Tokyo. During my postdoctoral research, I worked at Keio University, the University of Tokyo, and University College London. After spending approximately six years working in a robotics lab as a project researcher and later as a project associate professor, I joined the Department of Psychology at Rikkyo University, one of the top private universities in Japan, in 2023. Currently, my main research methods involve behavioral experiments and neuroimaging techniques (e.g., EEG, fMRI with the assistance of colleagues) to study human cognitive functions. 

Email: wen [at] rikkyo.ac.jp

What's new

25-Feb., 2025 New preprint! How do we integrate sensory cues to form our sense of agency? Read here: Bayesian Integration in Sense of Agency: Understanding Self-attribution and Individual Differences

08-Oct., 2024 Check out our two new preprints:
                      Action plan diversity in children during control exploration: Link between action and sense of agency
                      Reconcile sensory attenuation and enhancement: The temporal dynamics of self-generated sensory feedback

30-Sep., 2024 Our new paper entitled "Hierarchical Analysis of the Sense of Agency in Schizophrenia: Motor Control, Control Detection, and Self-attribution" has been published in Schizophrenia.

7-Jul., 2024 Our new paper entitled "Control over self and others’ face: Exploitation and exploration" has been published online in Scientific Reports.

21-Mar., 2024 New forum paper "The Sensitivity and Criterion of Sense of Agency" is published online on Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

31-Jan., 2024 New preprint entitlted "The sense of agency from active causal inference" is out! https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.29.577723v1

24-Nov., 2023 New preprint entitled "Control over self and others’ face: Exploitation and exploration" is out! https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/wpzf7/

11-Oct., 2023 New paper co-authored with Dr. Nobusako (Kio Univeristy) entitled "Action-outcome regularity perceptual sensitivity in children with developmental coordination disorder" has been published in Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

15-Sep., 2023 Our new paper on metacognition entitled "Metacognition and sense of agency" has been published in Cognition.

17-Aug., 2023 New preprint regarding control detection in patients with schizophrenia out. 

10-Jul., 2023 New paper entitled "Characteristics of EEG power spectra involved in the proficiency of motor learning" coauthored with Dr. Hamada Hiroyuki has been published by Frontiers in Neuroscience.

01-Apr., 2023  Set up my new lab at the Department of Psychology in Rikkyo University. https://cp.rikkyo.ac.jp/

06-Feb., 2023  The article co-authored with Mr. Mishima and Dr. Hayashida in Prof. Morioka's group (Kio University) "Adaptability of the sense of agency in healthy young adults in sensorimotor tasks for a short term" has been published in Behavioral Sciences and is available online.

20-Oct., 2022   The paper I co-authored with Dr. Nobusako (Kio University) "Developmental changes in action-outcome regularity perceptual sensitivity and its relationship to hand motor function in 5–16-year-old children" has been published by Scientific Reports for publication. My dot paradigm makes it possible to explore individual differences in sense of agency excluding the uncertainty in decision making/judgment criteria. The work by Dr. Nobusako is a milestone in the search on development of sense of agency.

13-Apr., 2022 I'm delighted and proud to announce that I have been chosen for the 2022 JPA Awards for International Contributions to Psychology. I'll be giving a special talk at the 86th JPA Annual Convention.

25-Feb., 2022 My new review paper coauthored with Prof. Imamizu "The sense of agency in perception, behaviour and human–machine interactions" has been published in Nature Reviews Psychology

11-Jan., 2022 Our new paper entitled "The over-estimation of distance for self-voice versus other-voice" has been published in Scientific Reports.

15-Oct., 2021 Our new paper entitled "Perception and control: Individual difference in the sense of agency is associated with learnability in sensorimotor adaptation" has been published in Scientific Reports.

01-Aug., 2021 I've moved from the Department of Precision Engineering to the Research into Artifacts, Center for Engineering

20-Mar., 2021 Our new paper entitled "Deceleration assistance mitigated the trade-off between sense of agency and driving performance" has been accepted for publication at Frontiers in Psychology.

11-Sep., 2020 Our new paper entitled "Categorical perception of control" has been published at eNeuro.

18-Jan., 2021 Our new paper entitled "Modified sensory feedback enhances the sense of agency during continuous body movements in virtual reality" has been published at Scientific Reports.

11-Sep., 2020 Our new paper entitled "Categorical perception of control" has been published at eNeuro.

21-Apr., 2020 Our new paper entitled "The active sensing of control difference" has been accepted for publication in iScience.

3-Dec., 2019 Our new review paper entitled "The Sense of Agency in Driving Automation" has been published in Frontiers in Psychology.

17-Nov., 2019 Our paper entitled "Prediction error and regularity detection underlie two dissociable mechanisms for computing the sense of agency" has been published in Cognition.

4-Jun., 2019 My new review paper is out on Consciousness and Cognition.

8-Aug., 2018 Our new paper on the readiness potential has been published on Scientific Reports

1-Aug., 2018 I've started working as a project associate professor at Department of Precision Engineering, The University of Tokyo from the 1st of August. Will continue my research on the sense of agency and motor control.

9-Apr., 2018 Our work on sense of control and SSVEP entitled "Enhanced perceptual processing of self-generated motion: Evidence from steady-state visual evoked potentials" (co-authors: Dr. Patrick Haggard, Ms. Elisa Brann, and Dr. Steven Di Costa) has been accepted by NeuroImage for publication.

5-Apr., 2018 My preivous work on spatial cognition with Prof. Hideaki Kawabata entitled "Impact of Navon-induced global and local processing biases on the acquisition of spatial knowledge" has been published by SAGE Open.

12-Jan., 2018 My work on the sense of control with Prof. Patrick Haggard entitled "Control changes the way we look at the world" has been published online by Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience at the early accesses. Access here.

27-Jul., 2017 New article entitled "Measurement of the perception of control during continuous movement using electroencephalography" is published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

23-Jun., 2017 Our new article entitled "The influence of performance on action-Effect integration in sense of agency" is published on Consciousness and Cognition

19-May., 2017 New article entitled "Continuous Estimation of Stress Using Physiological Signals during a Car Race" is published online

01-Apr., 2017 I was awarded a fellowship under the JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme, and will continue my research in University College London and the University of Tokyo

27-Jan., 2017 Mr Minohara (Asama lab) received MHS2016 Best Poster Award for his research on "How Anticipation for the Sense of Agency Affects Readiness Potential"

02-Sep., 2016 Moved to UCL and started my new research project in Prof. Haggard's group

03-Aug., 2016 New publication in Frontiers in Psychology entitled "Strength of Intentional Effort Enhances the Sense of Agency"

14-Jun., 2016 New publication in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience entitled "Goal-Directed Movement Enhances Body Representation Updating"

08-May, 2016 Presented a poster in the 1st international symposium on embodied-brain system science (EmboSS2016)