Multisensory integration in auditory and auditory-related areas of cortex

By Troy A. Hackett, Charles E. Schroeder. 2009

105 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Most auditory events in nature are accompanied by non-auditory signals, such as a view of the speaker's face during face-to-face communication or the vibration of a string during a musical performance. While it is known that accompanying visual and somatosensory signals can benefit auditory perception, often by making the sound seem louder, the specific neural bases for sensory amplification are still debated. In this review, we want to deal with what we regard as confusion on two topics that are crucial to our understanding of multisensory integration mechanisms in auditory cortex: (1) Anatomical Underpinnings (e.g., what circuits underlie multisensory convergence), and (2) Temporal Dynamics (e.g., what time windows of integration are physiologically feasible). The combined evidence on multisensory structure and function in auditory cortex advances the emerging view of the relationship between perception and low level multisensory integration. In fact, it seems that the question is no longer whether low level, putatively unisensory cortex is accessible to multisensory influences, but how.

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

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Citations in the corpus

Multisensory Processes: A Balancing Act across the Lifespan (2016, background): “This occurs despite the fact that visual and auditory energies propagate at different speeds as they travel to the sensory receptors and despite the fact that neural conduction speeds differ across the senses (reviewed in [47]).”
Multisensory integration: flexible use of general operations (2014, unknown): “As auditory inputs have faster cortical response latencies (Musacchia and Schroeder, 2009), they can reset the phase of ongoing oscillations in the visual cortex and thereby enhance visual excitability (Romei et al., 2012; Figure 2B).”
The multisensory function of the human primary visual cortex. (2016, background): “…strong evidence regarding the presence of multisensory processing because of their sub-millisecond temporal resolution, especially when combined with knowledge regarding signal propagation in different sensory systems (e.g. reviewed in Murray and Spierer (2009), and Musacchia and Schroeder (2009)).”
Top-down control and early multisensory processes: chicken vs. egg (2015, background): “…localization of the eMSI to low-level cortices could be taken as evidence for their strictly bottom-up nature, their latency at ∼50–100 ms is sufficiently “late” to provide ample opportunity for recursive processing (Musacchia and Schroeder, 2009; also Moran and Reilly, 2006 for modeling results).”
Distinct Functional Contributions of Primary Sensory and Association Areas to Audiovisual Integration in Object Categorization (2010, background): “…sulcus is currently considered as the main audiovisual convergence area that provides feedback modulation to HG (Kayser and Logothetis, 2009; Musacchia and Schroeder, 2009) and has also been identified as a key player in previous fMRI connectivity analyses (Noesselt et al., 2007; van…”
The COGs (context, object, and goals) in multisensory processing (2016, background): “…between inputs from different senses, where auditory-based responses within visual cortices co-occur with or even precede visually based responses to the same multisensory stimulus (animal models: Schroeder et al. 2004; Musacchia and Schroeder 2009; humans: Raij et al. 2010; Brang et al. 2015).”