Movement enhances tactile sensitivity through prediction

Tactile sensations decrease in felt intensity during movement, a phenomenon known as sensory gating. Competing theories attempt to explain why somatosensory perception is down-weighted during motion. We investigated how motor execution and prediction shape tactile sensations by precisely matching kinematics between active and passive movements. Perceived intensity was reduced in both conditions, but tactile sensitivity was enhanced rather than impaired during active movement compared with passive movement at matched kinematics. When passive movement velocity was predictable, sensitivity increased to the level of active movement, whereas temporal unpredictability impaired precision without affecting bias. These results show that predictions about imminent kinematics intrinsic to self-generated actions or learned during predictable passive motion sharpen tactile discrimination, whereas a separate movement-related process reduces perceived intensity. Our results reveal that movement does not globally suppress tactile processing but differentially affects bias and precision: perceived intensity decreases, whereas tactile discrimination improves when upcoming kinematics are predictable.NEW & NOTEWORTHY This study refines the classical view of somatosensory gating by dissociating bias and precision in tactile perception during movement. We show that while perceived intensity decreases in both active and passive motion, tactile discrimination improves when upcoming kinematics are predictable. These findings reveal that tactile gating involves not only reafferent suppression but also predictive sharpening of sensory precision.