Tactile suppression during human movement

The sense of touch supports smooth goal-directed behavior, improves motor learning, and even fosters human-machine interactions. Yet, tactile perception is impaired on a limb shortly before and during its movement. This tactile suppression may appear paradoxical, but there are often good reasons to down-weight tactile signals arising on one’s own moving limb. The talk will discuss under which circumstances the sense of touch on a moving limb is suppressed, what are the possible mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, and what could this mean for situations when tactile sampling is important for the ongoing task.