The magnitude of suppression to self-initiated sensations is dependent on the initiating motor-action

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The magnitude of suppression to self-initiated sensations is dependent on the initiating motor-action Nathan Mifsud1, Tom Beesley1 and Thomas Whitford1* 1 UNSW, School of Psychology, Australia Background: Self-initiated auditory sensations have been found to elicit smaller N1 amplitudes in the auditory evoked potential compared to physically identical externally-initiated sensations; this has been dubbed ‘N1-suppression’. The magnitude of N1-suppression is typically larger to sounds evoked by willed vocalizations compared to sounds evoked indirectly by motor actions (e.g., button-pressing for tones). While this effect may be due to a learning effect (i.e., auditory sensations are more likely to result from mouth movements than finger movements), it may also be due to the different sensations elicited in the different conditions. Methods: The present study compared the magnitude of N1-suppression to three different types of motor movements, namely, mouth movements, finger movements and eye movements. Twenty-five healthy individuals underwent Event-Related Potential (ERP) recording. Participants were required to either blow into a microphone (Blow condition), press a button (Press condition) or move their eye (Saccade condition) to generate a simple auditory tone. N1-suppression was calculated for each of the three conditions by subtracting the N1-amplitude for each condition from the External condition, where the auditory stimulus was generated automatically by the computer. Results: There were marked differences in N1-suppression between the 3 conditions. N1-suppression was largest in the Blow condition and smallest in the Saccade condition, with the Press condition showing intermediate levels of N1-suppression. Conclusions: The results of the study indicate that when holding auditory stimulus constant the magnitude of N1-suppression is dependent on the eliciting motor action; mouth movements are associated with higher levels of N1-suppression than eye-movements, with finger-movements in-between. These results suggest that N1-suppression is influenced by prior ‘learning’ as to the likelihood that a given motor action will result in an auditory sensation. Acknowledgements Thomas Whitford is supported by a Discovery Project from the Australian Research Council (DP140104394), a Career Development Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (APP1090507), and a Young Investigator Award (Barbara and John Streicker Investigator) from the NARSAD Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (17537). Keywords: corollary discharge, efference copy, N1, Event-related potentials, self-suppression Conference: ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Sydney, Australia, 2 Dec - 4 Dec, 2015. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Psychophysiology Citation: Mifsud N, Beesley T and Whitford T (2015). The magnitude of suppression to self-initiated sensations is dependent on the initiating motor-action. Conference Abstract: ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.219.00001 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 25 Oct 2015; Published Online: 30 Nov 2015. * Correspondence: Dr. Thomas Whitford, UNSW, School of Psychology, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia, t.whitford@unsw.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Nathan Mifsud Tom Beesley Thomas Whitford Google Nathan Mifsud Tom Beesley Thomas Whitford Google Scholar Nathan Mifsud Tom Beesley Thomas Whitford PubMed Nathan Mifsud Tom Beesley Thomas Whitford Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.