Two minds, one body: neural correlates of processing of We-information during shared control over a humanoid robot

Overview

Authors: Mateusz Woźniak^1,2, Romina Haxhi¹, Davide De Tommaso¹, Agnieszka Wykowska^1,3

Social Cognition in Human-Robot Interaction Unit, Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy
Institute of Applied Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
Hans-Fischer Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Technical University of Munich, Lichtenbergstrasse 2 a, D-85748 Garching, Germany

Journal: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, volume 381, issue 1962, article 20250163

Dates: received 25 August 2025; accepted 29 June 2026; published online 10 November 2026

Type: Research article · Language: English

License: CC BY

Identifiers: DOI · PMCID PMC13750424

Status: code found, still to be checked (how the code is found and verified)

Categories: EEG (modality), human (organism), cognitive (subfield)

Methods: Spectral & time-frequency, Statistics, Smoothing, state filtering, decompositions, Preprocessing, Evoked potentials, fMRI & imaging

Keywords: self, We-information, shared control, embodied self, social self

Citations: not cited yet (Europe PMC); 86 references in the paper

Abstract

When speaking about the self, we typically think about ‘I’ or ‘Me’. However, our relations with other people are also a critically important aspect of our self, forming our ‘We’. In the current study, we investigated processing of information about the We during joint control over a single body. While naturally such a case occurs among the conjoint twins, we reconstructed such a situation by allowing two people to share control over a single humanoid robot. Using EEG, we investigated which neurocognitive processes are affected by providing We-information, i.e. information that conveys knowledge about properties at the group-level, while being uninformative about the individuals. We found that processing of We-information engages a cascade of processes, as indexed by various event-related potentials (ERPs), involving perception (P1, N1 and P2p), action selection (N2), working memory (P3b) and response preparation (contingent negative variation, CNV). We-information also modulates perception and processing of the subsequent information about the robot's target position, as indicated by modulation of similar ERPs (P1, N2 and P3b). Moreover, we found that We-information can affect dynamic allocation of covert attention towards the side of the partner controlling the other side of the robot. Overall, our results show that processing of information about the We can have a widespread influence on cognition, similarly to processing information about the self.

This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘From being to identity: analysis and synthesis of the self’.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

No file of the authors' code could be read here: it is described below, and read at its source.

doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.c.8718634

License: none: the authors keep all their rights

State: unreachable at the last attempt, verified on 12 November 2026

Evidence: found in the paper

Software Heritage: not checked

Found in: the references

Not found: README, license file, CITATION.cff, environment file, tests, continuous integration, documentation

Availability: 1 check, the latest on 12 November 2026: unreachable at the last attempt (HTTP 202)

12 November 2026: unreachable at the last attempt (HTTP 202)

At the source: doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.8718634

The paper's code and data availability statement is in the Data section.

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Data

Datasets cited

zenodo:16918415, at Zenodo; found in the references

Data accessibility

Behavioural data, analysis scripts and materials are available in the following repository [85]. EEG data are available upon request from the corresponding authors.

Supplementary material is available online [86].

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 4 authors, 5 keywords, 80 references.

Cite

This paper

Woźniak, M., Haxhi, R., De Tommaso, D., & Wykowska, A. (2026). Two minds, one body: neural correlates of processing of We-information during shared control over a humanoid robot. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 381(1962), 20250163.

BibTeX

@article{wozniak2026two, author = {Woźniak, Mateusz and Haxhi, Romina and De Tommaso, Davide and Wykowska, Agnieszka}, title = {{Two minds, one body: neural correlates of processing of We-information during shared control over a humanoid robot}}, journal = {Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences}, year = {2026}, month = nov, volume = {381}, number = {1962}, pages = {20250163}, publisher = {The Royal Society}, issn = {0962-8436}, pmcid = {PMC13750424} }

RIS

TY - JOUR AU - Woźniak, Mateusz AU - Haxhi, Romina AU - De Tommaso, Davide AU - Wykowska, Agnieszka TI - Two minds, one body: neural correlates of processing of We-information during shared control over a humanoid robot T2 - Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences J2 - Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci PY - 2026 DA - 2026/11/11 VL - 381 IS - 1962 SP - 20250163 SN - 0962-8436 PB - The Royal Society LA - en ER -

CSL-JSON

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