Data from: The perceptual shaping of anticipatory actions

Humans display anticipatory motor responses to minimize the adverse effects of predictable perturbations. A widely accepted explanation for this behavior relies on the notion of an inverse model that, learning from motor errors, anticipates corrective responses. Here, we propose and validate the alternative hypothesis that anticipatory control can be realized through a cascade of purely sensory predictions that drive the motor system, reflecting the causal sequence of the perceptual events preceding the error. We compare both hypotheses in a simulated anticipatory postural adjustment task. We observe that adaptation in the sensory domain, but not in the motor one, supports the robust and generalizable anticipatory control characteristic of biological systems. Our proposal unites the neurobiology of the cerebellum with the theory of active inference and provides a concrete implementation of its core tenets with great relevance both to our understanding of biological control systems and, possibly, to their emulation in complex artefacts.人类会展现出预期性运动反应，以降低可预测扰动带来的负面影响。针对该行为的主流解释基于逆模型（inverse model）概念：该模型从运动误差中学习，从而预判出矫正反应。本文提出并验证了一种替代性假说：预期性控制可通过一系列纯粹的感官预测级联实现，这些预测驱动运动系统，反映了误差发生前感知事件的因果序列。我们在一项模拟预期姿势调整（anticipatory postural adjustment）任务中对两种假说进行了对比。我们发现，感官域而非运动域的适配过程，能够支撑生物系统所具备的稳健且可泛化的预期性控制特征。我们的假说将小脑神经生物学与主动推理（active inference）理论相结合，并为其核心信条提供了具体实现方案，这既有助于我们理解生物控制系统，也可能为在复杂人工制品中复现这类系统提供参考。