A human heartbeat acts as a physical gate that decides if you feel responsible for your own actions.
April 24, 2026
Original Paper
Cardio-respiratory rhythms shape when we act and how we experience the outcomes of our actions
PsyArXiv · qzs6j_v1
The Takeaway
The internal rhythm of the chest and lungs dictates the brain's internal sense of agency. Most people believe the feeling of being in control comes from a purely conscious, mental calculation. Biological data shows that timing an action to a specific phase of the cardiac cycle changes how much credit a person gives themselves. Action outcomes occurring during certain breath cycles feel more like personal choices and less like accidents. This link means the heart and lungs are actively filtering the subjective experience of free will. This discovery could redefine how we treat anxiety or disorders where people feel like they have lost control over their own bodies.
From the abstract
Interoceptive rhythms have been shown to shape when we act, with voluntary actions clustering in specific cardio-respiratory phases. Whether these phase-dependent biases also influence sense of agency (SoA), the feeling of controlling one’s actions and their outcomes, remains unclear. In a preregistered study (N = 46), we combined intentional binding with continuous cardio-respiratory recordings to examine phase-dependent modulation of action and tone binding. Actions preferentially clustered du