Multisensory visual–tactile object related network in humans: insights gained using a novel crossmodal adaptation approach

By Noa Tal, Amir Amedi. 2009

118 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Neuroimaging techniques have provided ample evidence for multisensory integration in humans. However, it is not clear whether this integration occurs at the neuronal level or whether it reflects areal convergence without such integration. To examine this issue as regards visuo-tactile object integration we used the repetition suppression effect, also known as the fMRI-based adaptation paradigm (fMR-A). Under some assumptions, fMR-A can tag specific neuronal populations within an area and investigate their characteristics. This technique has been used extensively in unisensory studies. Here we applied it for the first time to study multisensory integration and identified a network of occipital (LOtv and calcarine sulcus), parietal (aIPS), and prefrontal (precentral sulcus and the insula) areas all showing a clear crossmodal repetition suppression effect. These results provide a crucial first insight into the neuronal basis of visuo-haptic integration of objects in humans and highlight the power of using fMR-A to study multisensory integration using non-invasinve neuroimaging techniques.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sensory Systems

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Citations in the corpus

Multisensory Processes: A Balancing Act across the Lifespan (2016, background): “It worth nothing that, using novel cross-modal adaptation techniques, one study even showed that such geometrical shape information is shared between touch and vision within the same neurons [79].”
Visuo-haptic multisensory object recognition, categorization, and representation (2014, background): “Tal and Amedi (2009) sought to distinguish between these using fMRI adaptation (fMR-A).”
Identifying and Quantifying Multisensory Integration: A Tutorial Review (2014, methodology): “In this manner, fMR-A has been successfully used to identify multisensory convergence (Tal and Amedi 2009).”
ind the blind brain to understand the sighted one ! Is there a upramodal cortical functional architecture ? (2014, background): “For instance, the supramodal lateral occipital/inferior emporal cortex responsive to object form shows robust crossodal (visuo-tactile and audio-visual) adaptation during object ecognition (Doehrmann et al., 2010; Tal and Amedi, 2009).”