Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Cognition. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Cognition, 179, 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.005
Accepted author manuscript, 630 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC-ND
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 1/10/2018 |
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<mark>Journal</mark> | Cognition |
Volume | 179 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Pages (from-to) | 14-22 |
Publication Status | Published |
Early online date | 9/06/18 |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
Sensory attenuation refers to reduced brain responses to self-initiated sensations relative to those produced by the external world. It is a low-level process that may be linked to higher-level cognitive tasks such as reality monitoring. The phenomenon is often explained by prediction error mechanisms of universal applicability to sensory modality; however, it is most widely reported for auditory stimuli resulting from self-initiated hand movements. The present series of event-related potential (ERP) experiments explored the generalizability of sensory attenuation to the visual domain by exposing participants to flashes initiated by either their own button press or volitional saccade and comparing these conditions to identical, computer-initiated stimuli. The key results showed that the largest reduction of anterior visual N1 amplitude occurred for saccade-initiated flashes, while button press-initiated flashes evoked an intermediary response between the saccade-initiated and externally initiated conditions. This indicates that sensory attenuation occurs for visual stimuli and suggests that the degree of electrophysiological attenuation may relate to the causal likelihood of pairings between the type of motor action and the modality of its sensory response.