title: Cerebellar contribution to the prediction of self-initiated sounds.
abstract: In everyday life we frequently make the fundamental distinction between sensory input resulting from our own actions and sensory input that is externally-produced. It has been speculated that making this distinction involves the use of an internal forward-model, which enables the brain to adjust its response to self-produced sensory input. In the auditory domain, this idea has been supported by event-related potential and evoked-magnetic field studies revealing that self-initiated sounds elicit a suppressed N100/M100 brain response compared to externally-produced sounds. Moreover, a recent study reveals that patients with cerebellar lesions do not show a significant N100-suppression effect. This result supports the theory that the cerebellum is essential for generating internal forward predictions. However, all except one study compared self-initiated and externally-produced auditory stimuli in separate conditions. Such a setup prevents an unambiguous interpretation of the N100-suppression effect when distinguishing self- and externally-produced sensory stimuli: the N100-suppression can also be explained by differences in the allocation of attention in different conditions. In the current electroencephalography (EEG)-study we investigated the N100-suppression effect in an altered design comparing (i) self-initiated sounds to externally-produced sounds that occurred intermixed with these self-initiated sounds (i.e., both sound types occurred in the same condition) or (ii) self-initiated sounds to externally-produced sounds that occurred in separate conditions. Results reveal that the cerebellum generates selective predictions in response to self-initiated sounds independent of condition type: cerebellar patients, in contrast to healthy controls, do not display an N100-suppression effect in response to self-initiated sounds when intermixed with externally-produced sounds. Furthermore, the effect is not influenced by the temporal proximity of externally-produced sounds to self-produced sounds. Controls and patients showed a P200-reduction in response to self-initiated sounds. This suggests the existence of an additional and probably more conscious mechanism for identifying self-generated sounds that does not functionally depend on the cerebellum.
authors: Research Group "Subcortical Contributions to Comprehension", Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: fknolle@cbs.mpg.de.
authors: Franziska
authors: F
authors: Knolle
authors: Erich
authors: E
authors: Schröger
authors: Sonja A
authors: SA
authors: Kotz
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Auditory prediction; Cerebellum; Event-related potentials (ERP); Forward-model; Selectivity