Predictive attenuation of touch and tactile gating are distinct perceptual phenomena

Abstract

In recent decades, research on somatosensory perception has led to two important observations. First, self-generated touches that are predicted by voluntary movements become attenuated compared to externally generated touches of the same intensity (attenuation). Second, externally generated touches feel weaker and are more difficult to detect during movement than at rest (gating). Currently, researchers often consider gating and attenuation the same suppression process; however, this assumption is unwarranted because, despite more than forty years of research, no study has combined them in a single paradigm. We quantified how people perceive self-generated and externally generated touches during movement and rest. We show that whereas voluntary movement gates the precision of both self-generated and externally generated touch, the amplitude of self-generated touch is robustly attenuated compared to externally generated touch. Furthermore, attenuation and gating do not interact and are not correlated, and we conclude that they represent distinct perceptual phenomena.