The Development of Cortical Multisensory Integration

By Mark T. Wallace, Brian N. Carriere, Thomas J. Perrault, J. Vaughan, Barry E. Stein. 2006

131 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although there are many perceptual theories that posit particular maturational profiles in higher-order (i.e., cortical) multisensory regions, our knowledge of multisensory development is primarily derived from studies of a midbrain structure, the superior colliculus. Therefore, the present study examined the maturation of multisensory processes in an area of cat association cortex [i.e., the anterior ectosylvian sulcus (AES)] and found that these processes are rudimentary during early postnatal life and develop only gradually thereafter. The AES comprises separate visual, auditory, and somatosensory regions, along with many multisensory neurons at the intervening borders between them. During early life, sensory responsiveness in AES appears in an orderly sequence. Somatosensory neurons are present at 4 weeks of age and are followed by auditory and multisensory (somatosensory–auditory) neurons. Visual neurons and visually responsive multisensory neurons are first seen at 12 weeks of age. The earliest multisensory neurons are strikingly immature, lacking the ability to synthesize the cross-modal information they receive. With postnatal development, multisensory integrative capacity matures. The delayed maturation of multisensory neurons and multisensory integration in AES suggests that the higher-order processes dependent on these circuits appear comparatively late in ontogeny.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Nutrition and Dietetics, Sensory Systems

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Citations in the corpus

Development and Plasticity of Intra- and Intersensory Information Processing (2008, background): “…visual, and somatosensory domains, the AES also contains a large population of multisensory neurons that appear to be clustered at the borders between the major unisensory domains (Wallace et al, 1992; Jiang et al, 1994a, 1994b; Benedek et al, 2004; Meredith et al, 2006; Wallace et al, 2006).”
Spatiotemporal architecture of cortical receptive fields and its impact on multisensory interactions (2009, unknown): “Consistent with previous reports, the RFs of multisensory AES neurons typically exhibited a high degree of spatial overlap of their constituent unisensory RF (Wallace et al. 2006; Jiang et al. 1994a; Wallace et al. 1992), and showed marked response heterogeneities”
Neural Reorganization Following Sensory Loss: The Opportunity Of Change (2009, background): “Investigations of the development and maturation of multisensory circuits within the cat AES confirm that the capacity for multisensory integration is rudimentary during early postnatal life, that it gradually develops over time and that it is highly influenced by timing and the animal's overall sen”
Multisensory Interplay Reveals Crossmodal Influences on ‘Sensory-Specific’ Brain Regions, Neural Responses, and Judgments (2008, unknown): “Removal of multisensory ectosylvian cortex and rLS during early developmental in cats disrupts development of multisensory SC properties (Jiang et al., 2007; Wallace et al., 2006).”
Functional connectivity of visual cortex in the blind follows retinotopic organization principles (2015, methodology): “, 2014) throughout the sensory and multisensory cortices (Wallace et al., 2006; Carriere et al., 2007).”
Plasticity of multisensory dorsal stream functions: Evidence from congenitally blind and sighted adults (2010, background): “It has been shown that multisensory neurons and multisensory integration in a number of brainstem and cortical sites of the cat and monkey develop comparatively late in ontogeny and thus require a considerable period of postnatal maturation (Wallace and Stein, 2000; Wallace et al., 2006).”
Spatial receptive field organization of multisensory neurons and its impact on multisensory interactions (2009, unknown): “Given that the receptive fields of AES multisensory neurons are substantially larger than those in the SC (Wallace et al., 2006, 1992), and that the visual and auditory representations in the AES are not spatiotopically ordered (Olson and Graybiel, 1987; Clarey and Irvine, 1990), whether its SRF…”