Rapid Recalibration to Audiovisual Asynchrony

By Erik Van der Burg, David Alais, J. Cass. 2013

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

To combine information from different sensory modalities, the brain must deal with considerable temporal uncertainty. In natural environments, an external event may produce simultaneous auditory and visual signals yet they will invariably activate the brain asynchronously due to different propagation speeds for light and sound, and different neural response latencies once the signals reach the receptors. One strategy the brain uses to deal with audiovisual timing variation is to adapt to a prevailing asynchrony to help realign the signals. Here, using psychophysical methods in human subjects, we investigate audiovisual recalibration and show that it takes place extremely rapidly without explicit periods of adaptation. Our results demonstrate that exposure to a single, brief asynchrony is sufficient to produce strong recalibration effects. Recalibration occurs regardless of whether the preceding trial was perceived as synchronous, and regardless of whether a response was required. We propose that this rapid recalibration is a fast-acting sensory effect, rather than a higher-level cognitive process. An account in terms of response bias is unlikely due to a strong asymmetry whereby stimuli with vision leading produce bigger recalibrations than audition leading. A fast-acting recalibration mechanism provides a means for overcoming inevitable audiovisual timing variation and serves to rapidly realign signals at onset to maximize the perceptual benefits of audiovisual integration.

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

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Citations in the corpus

Assessing the Role of the ‘Unity Assumption’ on Multisensory Integration: A Review (2017, background): “For example, when the asynchronous visual and auditory stimuli in a given trial were perceived as having been presented at the same time, this can bias the perception in the following trial (van der Burg et al., 2013).”
Multisensory integration: flexible use of general operations (2014, unknown): “…can be shaped gradually during development (Hillock-Dunn andWallace, 2012; Lewkowicz, 2012; Lewkowicz and Ghazanfar, 2009) but can also occur very rapidly, as shown by recalibration experiments in temporal, spatial, and content (speech) domains (Van der Burg et al., 2013; Vroomen and Baart, 2012).”