Involuntary motor responses are elicited both by rare sounds and rare pitch changes

Abstract Unpredictable deviations from an otherwise regular auditory sequence, as well as rare sounds following a period of silence, are detected automatically. Recent evidence suggests that the latter also elicit quick involuntary modulations of ongoing motor activity emerging as early as 100 ms following sound onset, which was attributed to supramodal processing. We explored such force modulations for both rare and deviant sounds. Participants (N = 29) pinched a force sensitive device and maintained a force of 1–2 N for periods of 1 min. Task-irrelevant tones were presented under two conditions. In the Rare condition, 4000 Hz tones were presented every 8-to-16 s. In the Roving condition, 4000 Hz and 2996 Hz tones were presented at rate of 1 s, with infrequent (p = 1/12) frequency changes. In the Rare condition, transient force modulations were observed with a significant increase at ~ 234 ms, and a decrease at ~ 350 ms. In the Roving condition with low frequency deviant tones, an increase in force was observed at ~ 277 ms followed by a decrease at ~ 413 ms. No significant modulations were observed during perception of high frequency deviants. These results suggest that both rare silence-breaking sounds and low-pitched deviants evoke automatic fluctuations of motor responses, which opens up the possibility that these force modulations are triggered by stimulus-specific change-detection processes.