Self-agency

Self-agency, also known as the phenomenal will, is the sense that actions are self-generated. Scientist Benjamin Libet was the first to study it, concluding that brain activity predicts the action before one even has conscious awareness of his or her intention to act upon that action (see Neuroscience of free will). Daniel Wegner later defined the three criteria of self-agency: priority, exclusivity, and consistency.

According to Wegner, priority means that an action must be planned before the action is initiated. The interval between the action and the effect is known as the intentional binding. Another criterion for self-agency is exclusivity, which means the effect is due to the person's action and not because of other potential causes for the effect. The last criterion Wegner suggested was consistency. Consistency means that one's planned action must occur as planned.

Internal motor cues are also an indicator in deciding whether an action occurred through self-agency, and can be measured by the generation of movement. If the predicted sensory state matches the actual sensory state, then self-agency has likely occurred. No models that predict agency have ever been proved.