Abstract
Auditory feedback accompanies almost all our actions, but its contribution to body-representation is understudied. Recently it has been shown that the auditory distance of action sounds recalibrates perceived tactile distances on one’s arm, suggesting that action sounds can change the mental representation of arm length. However, the question remains open of what factors play a role in this recalibration. In this study we investigate two of these factors, kinaesthesia, and sense of agency. Across two experiments, we asked participants to tap with their arm on a surface while extending their arm. We manipulated the tapping sounds to originate at double the distance to the tapping locations, as well as their synchrony to the action, which is known to affect feelings of agency over the sounds. Kinaesthetic cues were manipulated by having additional conditions in which participants did not displace their arm but kept tapping either close (Experiment 1) or far (Experiment 2) from their body torso. Results show that both the feelings of agency over the action sounds and kinaesthetic cues signaling arm displacement when displacement of the sound source occurs are necessary to observe changes in perceived tactile distance on the arm. In particular, these cues resulted in the perceived tactile distances on the arm being felt smaller, as compared to distances on a reference location. Moreover, our results provide the first evidence of consciously perceived changes in arm-representation evoked by action sounds and suggest that the observed changes in perceived tactile distance relate to experienced arm elongation. We discuss the observed effects in the context of forward internal models of sensorimotor integration. Our results add to these models by showing that predictions related to action sounds must fit with kinaesthetic cues in order for auditory inputs to change body-representation.
Highlights
Sounds accompany almost every bodily movement and action we produce
That action sounds constitute part of this reafferent inflow, as suggested by recent neuroimaging studies demonstrating the link between action sounds and brain areas involved in the planning, preparation, and observation of actions involved in the production of those sounds, and that predictions related to action sounds must fit with kinesthetic cues related to the performed actions in order to make use of the auditory inputs to update the model
We showed that action sounds may be attributed to the outputs of the actions performed by one’s hand even when the sounds originate at double the distance at which the hand is, provided that the feelings of agency and kinaesthetic cues signaling arm displacement are preserved
Summary
Think for instance about the sound of your footsteps, the impact sound of an object falling from your hand onto the floor, or the sound produced when typing on a keyboard These sounds are highly rich in information about one’s own body and its effects on the outside world; for instance, footstep sounds vary according to body weight and strength, as well as according to the emotional state of the walker (Li et al, 1991; Bresin et al, 2010; Tajadura-Jiménez et al, 2015a). An artificial hand may feel like part of one’s own body when one sees it being touched and in synchrony receives touch on one’s own, unseen, hand This is the result of the integration of information coming from different sensory channels – vision, touch, and proprioception (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998). Using a tool to act with one’s arm upon relatively distant objects can result in an increase of represented arm length (Cardinali et al, 2009, 2012; Canzoneri et al, 2013b)
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