Self-Agency and Self-Ownership in Cognitive Mapping

The concepts of agency and ownership were described two decades ago to explain the crucial relationship between the narrative- – or experiencing – self and the experience. These concepts were applied mostly to bodily consciousness. The construct of cognitive mapping allows these concepts to be applied to the relations between the narrative-self and the experience as represented on a cognitive map. Computational models can be used to explain the integration of self-generated information (e.g., priors, beliefs, memories, simulations), the interplay between egocentric and allocentric reference frames, and personal schemata into the cognitive maps. The concepts of agency and ownership may help us to understand psychological and clinical phenomena as well as their underlying neurocognitive and computational mechanisms