Action observation modulates auditory perception of the consequence of others' actions.
We can easily discriminate self-produced from externally generated sensory signals. Recent studies suggest that the prediction of the sensory consequences of one's own actions made by forward model can be used to attenuate the sensory effects of self-produced movements, thereby enabling a differentiation of the self-produced sensation from the externally generated one. The present study showed that attenuation of sensation occurred both when participants themselves performed a goal-directed action and when they observed experimenter performing the same action, although they clearly reported that the tones were produced by other during action observation and by themselves during their own action. These results suggest that sensory prediction of action modulates ongoing auditory processing irrespective of who produces the sounds and that the explicit judgment of agency does not necessarily rely on the same mechanisms on which implicit perceptual measures such as sensory attenuation rely.
Sato
Atsushi
A
Faculty of Human Development, University of Toyama, 3190 Gofuku, Toyama 930-8555, Japan. a_sato@edu.u-toyama.ac.jp
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception; D008297:Male; D010898:Pitch Perception; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D013017:Sound Localization; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult