Behavioral and neural correlates of perceived effort during willed actions

Movements are accompanied by a variety of perceptual information which allows to distinguish between self- and externally-generated actions. A perceptual feature which plays a crucial role in constructing the experience of willed behavior is the perceived effort. A recent theoretical framework extended the feedforward model of sensorimotor control by postulating that perception of effort could be related to sensory predictions. Within this framework, our research project is aimed at investigating the mechanisms underlying the perceived effort, by providing both behavioral and neural evidence on the interplay between an index of sensory prediction, that is sensory attenuation, and the perception of effort.