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Action effect anticipation: neurophysiological basis and functional consequences.

Florian Waszak¹, Pedro Cardoso-Leite, Gethin Hughes

¹Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France. f.waszak@gmx.net

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews

|November 24, 2011

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Voluntary actions are guided by predicted goals. The brain pre-activates action effects, influencing sensory attenuation and intentional binding by preparing perceptual representations.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Science
Action Planning

Background:

Voluntary actions are goal-directed.
Medial frontal cortex is vital for linking actions to predicted effects.
Brain activity anticipates action outcomes during selection.

Purpose of the Study:

Review evidence for action effect prediction.
Explore neurophysiological basis and functional consequences.
Propose a mechanism for sensory attenuation and intentional binding.

Main Methods:

Review of neuroimaging and neurophysiological data.
Theoretical framework integrating action preparation and sensory processing.
Comparison with mental imagery and repetition suppression.

Main Results:

Action preparation involves pre-activation of predicted sensory consequences.
This pre-activation explains sensory attenuation (harder discrimination) and intentional binding (faster awareness).
A neural basis for processing predicted action effects is proposed.

Conclusions:

Pre-activation of predicted sensory consequences is a key mechanism in voluntary action.
This mechanism offers a unified account for phenomena like sensory attenuation and intentional binding.
Further research can explore the neural underpinnings through comparisons with related cognitive processes.