Question

5. Wolpert says that there's one very clear example in which a sensation you generate feels very different than if another person generated it. Please explain this example and how Wolpert explored it and whether he saw the experiment as a success or not.

Answer 1

Answer:

1 (a). The example was contained in "the sensation of tickling yourself feels so much weaker than that of someone else tickling you. "

(b).  Wolpert explored it through the actions of the Participants in the study were they were asked to use a finger on their right hand to tap a finger on their left hand with a computer-controlled device between the fingers.

(c). Whether he saw the experiment as a success or not.

Yes, he saw the experiment as a success with the proof of the above-mention experiment. (find details below)

Explanation:

1 (a). The example was contained in "the sensation of tickling yourself feels so much weaker than that of someone else tickling you. " This expression can be elucidated further by considering that our senses are constantly inundated with information from which the brain must select the most important in order to guide our behavior. Because the brain is interested in novel information, it tends to discount sensations that result directly from our own actions, such as when we touch one part of our body with another. It has been suggested that a brain mechanism predicts these sensory signals in advance and attenuates them before they reach awareness. This may explain, for example, why the sensation of tickling yourself feels so much weaker than that of someone else tickling you.

(b) & (c).

The research study reported this week supports this theory. Participants in the study were asked to use a finger on their right hand to tap a finger on their left hand. A computer-controlled device between the fingers could delay or advance the transmission of the tap to the left finger. The sensation of touch in the left finger was found to be reduced during a time window centered on the time at which the fingers would normally make contact. This phenomenon, whereby the brain seems to anticipate when a self-derived action should be perceived, may have the effect of making a touch from an external source easier to detect. The findings suggest that an element of prediction is involved in the attenuation of internally-derived sensation and that the attenuation is not merely associated with the body's movement per se.