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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on June 8, 2009
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhp110
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Attenuation of Somatosensory Responses to Self-Produced Tactile Stimulation

Maike D. Hesse1,2, Nobuyki Nishitani3,4, Gereon R. Fink2,5, Veikko Jousmäki1 and Riitta Hari1,3,4,6

1 Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, 02015 TKK Espoo, Finland, 2 Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-3), Cognitive Neurology, Research Center Juelich, Juelich 52428, Germany, 3 Cognitive Sciences Section, Department of Sensory and Communicative Disorders, Research Institute, National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities, 359-8555 Tokorozawa, Japan, 4 Department of Brain Pathophysiology, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, 606-8501 Kyoto, Japan, 5 Department of Neurology, University Hospital Cologne, 50937 Cologne, Germany, 6 Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Helsinki University Central Hospital, 00290 Helsinki, Finland

Address correspondence to Maike D. Hesse, Cognitive Neurology Section, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-3), Research Centre Juelich, Leo-Brandt-Strasse, Juelich 52428, Germany. Email: m.hesse{at}fz-juelich.de.

Sensory stimulation resulting from one's own behavior or the outside world is easily differentiated by healthy persons who are able to predict the sensory consequences of their own actions. This ability has been related to cortical attenuation of activation elicited by self-produced stimulation. To date, however, the neural processes underlying this modulation remain to be elucidated. We therefore recorded whole-scalp magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals from 10 young adults either when they were touched by another person with a brush or when they touched themselves with the same device. The main MEG responses peaked at the primary somatosensory cortex at 54 ± 2 ms. Signals and source strengths were about a fifth weaker to self-produced than external touch. Importantly, attenuation was present in each subject. Control recordings indicated that the suppression was neither caused by hand movements as such nor by visual cues. The very early start of the attenuation already about 30 ms after stimulation onset is in line with the hypothesis of forward mechanisms, based on motor commands, as the basis of differentiation between self-produced and externally produced tactile sensations.

Key Words: agency • forward models • magnetoencephalography • somatosensory cortex • touch


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