Speech-Gesture Matching and Schizotypal Traits: A Network Approach.

Background And Hypothesis: Impaired speech-gesture matching has repeatedly been shown in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Here, we tested the hypothesis that schizotypal traits in the general population are related to reduced speech-gesture matching performance and reduced self-reports about gesture perception. We further explored the relationships between facets of schizotypy and gesture processing in a network model.

Action-based predictions affect visual perception, neural processing, and pupil size, regardless of temporal predictability.

Sensory consequences of one's own action are often perceived as less intense, and lead to reduced neural responses, compared to externally generated stimuli. Presumably, such sensory attenuation is due to predictive mechanisms based on the motor command (efference copy). However, sensory attenuation has also been observed outside the context of voluntary action, namely when stimuli are temporally predictable.

The effect of self-generated versus externally generated actions on timing, duration, and amplitude of blood oxygen level dependent response for visual feedback processing.

It has been widely assumed that internal forward models use efference copies to create predictions about the sensory consequences of our own actions. While these predictions have frequently been associated with a reduced blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response in sensory cortices, the timing and duration of the hemodynamic response for the processing of video feedback of self-generated (active) versus externally generated (passive) movements is poorly understood. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that predictive mechanisms for self-generated actions lead to early and shorter neural processing compared with externally generated movements.

Non-stimulated regions in early visual cortex encode the contents of conscious visual perception.

Predictions shape our perception. The theory of predictive processing poses that our brains make sense of incoming sensory input by generating predictions, which are sent back from higher to lower levels of the processing hierarchy. These predictions are based on our internal model of the world and enable inferences about the hidden causes of the sensory input data.

Different contributions of efferent and reafferent feedback to sensorimotor temporal recalibration.

Adaptation to delays between actions and sensory feedback is important for efficiently interacting with our environment. Adaptation may rely on predictions of action-feedback pairing (motor-sensory component), or predictions of tactile-proprioceptive sensation from the action and sensory feedback of the action (inter-sensory component). Reliability of temporal information might differ across sensory feedback modalities (e.