The spatial specificity of sensory attenuation for self-touch

Self-touch is sensed less intense as touch produced by another person. According to the standard explanation, if predicted and actual sensations match, the intensity of the touch will be reduced. Here, we asked whether sensory attenuation is spatially specific. To this end, participants laid their left hand under a metal arc on which a force sensor was mounted. Pressing the sensor caused one of two motors to rotate a lever that either touched the index or the ring finger. We took care that no cues would reveal in advance which of the motors would move in order to leave participants uninformed about the finger that will be stimulated. Any reduction in felt intensity of the touch could therefore be induced only by the efference copy of the touching movement. We found strong spatial specificity of sensory attenuation of self-touch, selecting between two fingers of the same hand.     

Perception of Happening: How the Brain Deals with the No-History Problem

In physics, the temporal dimension has units of infinitesimally brief duration. Given this, how is it possible to perceive things, such as motion, music, and vibrotactile stimulation, that involve extension across many units of time? To address this problem, it is proposed that there is what is termed an “information construct of happening” (ICOH), a simultaneous representation of recent, temporally differentiated perceptual information on the millisecond time scale. The main features of the ICOH are (i) time marking, semantic labeling of all information in the ICOH with ordinal temporal information and distance from what is informationally identified as the present moment, (ii) vector informational features that specify kind, direction, and rate of change for every feature in a percept, and (iii) connectives, information relating vector informational features at adjacent temporal locations in the ICOH. The ICOH integrates products of perceptual processing with recent historical information in sensory memory on the subsecond time scale. Perceptual information about happening in informational sensory memory is encoded in semantic form that preserves connected semantic trails of vector and timing information. The basic properties of the ICOH must be supported by a general and widespread timing mechanism that generates ordinal and interval timing information and it is suggested that state-dependent networks may suffice for that purpose. Happening, therefore, is perceived at a moment and is constituted by an information structure of connected recent historical information.     

A mixed-methods examination of autonomous sensory meridian response: Comparison to frisson

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a pleasurable, head-oriented tingling sensation, typically induced by exposure to audiovisual triggers, producing feelings of relaxation and euphoria. This article explores the induction of ASMR experiences in a laboratory setting amongst non-specialised participants, as well as the relationship between ASMR and frisson, or ‘musical chills’. In previous work, the ASMR-15 was found to be a reliable measure of ASMR propensity, however, the predictive validity of the measure has yet to be determined. The aim of this study was to assess whether ASMR-15 scores predict greater ASMR induction in an experimental setting. To address this, N = 100 undergraduate psychology students completed the ASMR-15 and a measure of frisson, before viewing ASMR stimuli under controlled conditions. Mixed-methods analyses indicated the successful induction of ASMR amongst some participants, convergence between ASMR-15 scores and video ratings, as well as divergence between ASMR and frisson scores.     

Functional connectivity associated with five different categories of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) triggers

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a sensory-emotional phenomenon in which specific sensory stimuli (“ASMR triggers”) reliably elicit feelings of relaxation and tingling sensations on the head, neck, and shoulders. However, there are individual differences in which stimuli elicit ASMR and in the intensity of these responses. In the current research, we used resting-state fMRI to examine the functional connectivity associated with these differences. Fifteen individuals with self-reported ASMR completed the ASMR Checklist, which measures sensitivity to different ASMR triggers, and a resting-state fMRI scan. Checklist scores were entered as covariates to determine whether the functional connectivity of eight resting-state networks differed as a function of participants’ sensitivity to five categories of triggers. The results indicated unique patterns of functional connectivity associated with sensitivity to each ASMR trigger category. Sensitivity to two trigger categories was positively correlated with the dorsal attention network, suggesting that ASMR may involve atypical attentional processing.     

Subjectively different emotional schematic faces not automatically discriminated from the brain’s bioelectrical responses

The present study investigates how the brain automatically discriminates emotional schematic faces, as indicated by the mismatch responses, and how reliable these brain responses are. Thirty-three healthy volunteers participated in the vMMN EEG experiment with four experimental sets differing from each other by the type of standard (object with scrambled face features) and the type of deviants (Angry, Happy and Neutral schematic faces) presented. Conscious subjective evaluations of valence, arousal and attention catching of the same stimuli showed clear differentiation of emotional expressions. Deviant faces elicited rather similar vMMN at frontal and occipital sites. Bayesian analyses suggest that vMMN does not differ between angry and happy faces. Neutral faces, however, did not yield statistically significant vMMN at occipital leads. Pearson’s correlation and intra-class correlation analyses showed that the brain’s reactions to the stimuli were highly stable within individuals across the experimental sets, whereas the mismatch responses were much more variable.