Cancelling cancellation? Sensorimotor control, agency, and prediction

Abstract

For decades, classic theories of action control and action awareness have been built around the idea that the brain predictively ‘cancels’ expected action outcomes. However, recent research casts doubt over this basic premise. What do these new findings mean for classic accounts of action? Should we now ‘cancel’ old data, theories and approaches generated under this idea? In this paper, we argue ‘No’. While doubts about predictive cancellation may urge us to fundamentally rethink how predictions shape perception, the wider pyramid using these ideas to explain action control and agentic experiences can remain largely intact. Some adaptive functions assigned to predictive cancellation can be achieved through quasi-predictive processes, that influence perception without actively tracking the probabilistic structure of the environment. Other functions may rely upon truly predictive processes, but not require that these predictions cancel perception. Appreciating the role of these processes may help us to move forward in explaining how agents optimise their interactions with the external world, even if predictive cancellation is cancelled from theory.

The Generic Inhibitory Function of Corollary Discharge in Motor Intention: Evidence from the Modulation Effects of Speech Preparation on the Late Components of Auditory Neural Responses

“…The operation of the internal forward model has been assumed to rely on the inhibitory modulation of the CD and EC on sensory processing [ Blakemore and Decety, 2001 ; Houde et al, 2002 ; Tian et al, 2018 (but also see exceptions of enhancement modulation in recent empirical and theoretical studies; Li et al, 2020 ; Press et al, 2022 )]. Recently, an updated theoretical framework has been proposed by considering distinct modulatory functions of CD and EC throughout the time course of actions ( Li et al, 2020 ).…”