Department of Information Medicine, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, 187-8551, Japan.
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Cognitive Neurorobotics Research Unit, Okinawa, 904-0495, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2022 Aug 25;12(1):14542. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-18207-7.
The brain attenuates its responses to self-produced exteroceptions (e.g., we cannot tickle ourselves). Is this phenomenon, known as sensory attenuation, enabled innately, or acquired through learning? Here, our simulation study using a multimodal hierarchical recurrent neural network model, based on variational free-energy minimization, shows that a mechanism for sensory attenuation can develop through learning of two distinct types of sensorimotor experience, involving self-produced or externally produced exteroceptions. For each sensorimotor context, a particular free-energy state emerged through interaction between top-down prediction with precision and bottom-up sensory prediction error from each sensory area. The executive area in the network served as an information hub. Consequently, shifts between the two sensorimotor contexts triggered transitions from one free-energy state to another in the network via executive control, which caused shifts between attenuating and amplifying prediction-error-induced responses in the sensory areas. This study situates emergence of sensory attenuation (or self-other distinction) in development of distinct free-energy states in the dynamic hierarchical neural system.
大脑会减弱对自身产生的外部感觉（例如，我们无法自我瘙痒）的反应。这种被称为感觉衰减的现象是天生的还是通过学习获得的？在这里，我们使用基于变分自由能最小化的多模态层次递归神经网络模型进行的模拟研究表明，通过两种不同类型的感觉运动经验的学习，可以发展出一种感觉衰减机制，这两种经验涉及自身产生或外部产生的外部感觉。对于每种感觉运动情境，通过自上而下的预测精度和来自每个感觉区域的下传感觉预测误差之间的相互作用，在网络中出现了一个特定的自由能状态。网络中的执行区域充当信息枢纽。因此，两个感觉运动情境之间的转变通过执行控制触发了网络中从一个自由能状态到另一个自由能状态的转变，这导致了在感觉区域中减弱和放大预测误差引起的反应之间的转变。这项研究将感觉衰减（或自我-他人区分）的出现置于动态层次神经系统中不同自由能状态的发展中。
