Predictions of bimanual self-touch determine the temporal tuning of somatosensory perception

Author:

Cemeljic Noa,Job XavierORCID,Kilteni KonstantinaORCID

Abstract

AbstractWe effortlessly distinguish between touching ourselves with our hands and being touched by other people or objects. Motor control theories posit that this distinction is made possible by the brain predicting the somatosensory consequences of our voluntary movements based on an ‘efference copy’, and attenuating our responses to the predicted self-touch. However, it remains unclear how these predictions impact somatosensory perception at times other than during self- touch: for example, as our hand reaches to touch our body or moves away from it. Here participants discriminated forces applied on their left index finger by a motor. The forces were applied during the reaching movement of their right hand towards the left hand, including the time the reaching ended by simulating self-touch between the hands, or after the reaching movement. We observed that the forces on the left hand felt progressively weaker during the reaching phase, reached their minimum perceived intensity at the time of self-touch, and quickly recovered after the end of the reaching. All effects were replicated with a new cohort of participants that further demonstrated that this gradual attenuation of the perceived magnitude of touch vanished during similar right hand reaching movements that did not produce expectations for self-touch between the two hands. Together, our results indicate a temporal tuning of somatosensory perception during movements to self-touch and underscore the role of sensorimotor context in forming predictions that attenuate the intensity of self- generated touch.

Publisher

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3