Research articleMismatch negativity (MMN) to speech sounds is modulated systematically by manual grip execution

•The influence of grip actions on the MMNs to heard syllables was examined.•MMN was smaller to a syllable congruent with the grip than to an incongruent one.•This shows for the first time that manual actions systematically modulated the MMN.•Grasping and speech interact at the pre-attentive level, reflected by the MMN.

Manual actions and speech are connected: for example, grip execution can influence simultaneous vocalizations and vice versa. Our previous studies show that the consonant [k] is associated with the power grip and the consonant [t] with the precision grip. Here we studied whether the interaction between speech sounds and grips could operate already at a pre-attentive stage of auditory processing, reflected by the mismatch-negativity (MMN) component of the event-related potential (ERP). Participants executed power and precision grips according to visual cues while listening to syllable sequences consisting of [ke] and [te] utterances. The grips modulated the MMN amplitudes to these syllables in a systematic manner so that when the deviant was [ke], the MMN response was larger with a precision grip than with a power grip. There was a converse trend when the deviant was [te]. These results suggest that manual gestures and speech can interact already at a pre-attentive processing level of auditory perception, and show, for the first time that manual actions can systematically modulate the MMN.