TY  - JOUR
A1  - Limanowski, Jakub
A1  - Lopes, Pedro
A1  - Keck, Janis
A1  - Baudisch, Patrick
A1  - Friston, Karl
A1  - Blankenburg, Felix
T1  - Action-dependent processing of touch in the human parietal operculum and posterior insula
JF  - Cerebral Cortex
N2  - Somatosensory input generated by one's actions (i.e., self-initiated body movements) is generally attenuated. Conversely, externally caused somatosensory input is enhanced, for example, during active touch and the haptic exploration of objects. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to ask how the brain accomplishes this delicate weighting of self-generated versus externally caused somatosensory components. Finger movements were either self-generated by our participants or induced by functional electrical stimulation (FES) of the same muscles. During half of the trials, electrotactile impulses were administered when the (actively or passively) moving finger reached a predefined flexion threshold. fMRI revealed an interaction effect in the contralateral posterior insular cortex (pIC), which responded more strongly to touch during self-generated than during FES-induced movements. A network analysis via dynamic causal modeling revealed that connectivity from the secondary somatosensory cortex via the pIC to the supplementary motor area was generally attenuated during self-generated relative to FES-induced movements-yet specifically enhanced by touch received during self-generated, but not FES-induced movements. Together, these results suggest a crucial role of the parietal operculum and the posterior insula in differentiating self-generated from externally caused somatosensory information received from one's moving limb.
KW  - active touch
KW  - dynamic causal modeling
KW  - insula
KW  - parietal operculum
KW  - somatosensation
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhz111
SN  - 1047-3211
SN  - 1460-2199
VL  - 30
IS  - 2
SP  - 607
EP  - 617
PB  - Oxford University Press
CY  - Oxford
ER  -