Motor-Sensory Recalibration Leads to an Illusory Reversal of Action and Sensation

To judge causality, organisms must determine the temporal order of their actions and sensations. However, this judgment may be confounded by changing delays in sensory pathways, suggesting the need for dynamic temporal recalibration. To test for such a mechanism, we artificially injected a fixed del...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuron (Cambridge, Mass.) Mass.), 2006-09, Vol.51 (5), p.651-659
Main Authors: Stetson, Chess, Cui, Xu, Montague, P. Read, Eagleman, David M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping
Experiments
Humans
Hypotheses
Judgment - physiology
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Reaction Time
SYSNEURO
Time Factors
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Summary:To judge causality, organisms must determine the temporal order of their actions and sensations. However, this judgment may be confounded by changing delays in sensory pathways, suggesting the need for dynamic temporal recalibration. To test for such a mechanism, we artificially injected a fixed delay between participants' actions (keypresses) and subsequent sensations (flashes). After participants adapted to this delay, flashes at unexpectedly short delays after the keypress were often perceived as occurring before the keypress, demonstrating a recalibration of motor-sensory temporal order judgments. When participants experienced illusory reversals, fMRI BOLD signals increased in anterior cingulate cortex/medial frontal cortex (ACC/MFC), a brain region previously implicated in conflict monitoring. This illusion-specific activation suggests that the brain maintains not only a recalibrated representation of timing, but also a less-plastic representation against which to compare it.
ISSN:0896-6273
1097-4199
DOI:10.1016/j.neuron.2006.08.006