Huge thanks to my co-authors Lau Møller Andersen @ualsbombe.bsky.social, Mikkel Vinding, Noa Cemeljic @noacemeljic.bsky.social, Daniel Lundqvist and PI Konstantina Kilteni @kkilteni.bsky.social

This is the first evidence in humans that:

🅱️ Beta oscillations not only index motor preparation, but play a role in predicting self-touch.

🧠 Cerebellum sends predictive signals to the somatosensory cortex before self-touch.

This revealed greater pre-stimulus beta-band desynchronisation and increased cerebellar-to-somatosensory connectivity before self-touch compared to misaligned touch.

Next, how did we isolate pre-stim prediction-related effects from general movement-related activity? 🤔

✅ First subtract activity from the same conditions without tactile stimuli

✅ Then compare self-touch and misaligned touch - both have voluntary movement but one feels like you touch yourself!

As expected, self-touch evoked weaker somatosensory activity (as early as 50ms) compared to external and misaligned touch.

We compared the same touch under three conditions:

1. externally generated touch (no movement)

2. self-touch 👉👈

3. misaligned touch 👉 👈 (same movement, disrupted tactile prediction)

Movement kinematics were matched between self-touch and misaligned touch conditions 😎

📣 New preprint 📣

The brain attenuates self-touch, but how does this unfold at the neural level before the touch? We used MEG to find out 🧠 👉👈