scholarly journals Challenges in quantifying multisensory integration: alternative criteria, models, and inverse effectiveness

2009 ◽  
Vol 198 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry E. Stein ◽  
Terrence R. Stanford ◽  
Ramnarayan Ramachandran ◽  
Thomas J. Perrault ◽  
Benjamin A. Rowland
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Paul Holmes

This brief commentary criticises the use of flawed statistical methods in the paper by Kayser and colleagues (2010), published in Current Biology. The commentary was not accepted for publication, despite broad agreement that the statistical methods were indeed flawed. Reviews and responses are included with the main text.


eLife ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torrey LS Truszkowski ◽  
Oscar A Carrillo ◽  
Julia Bleier ◽  
Carolina M Ramirez-Vizcarrondo ◽  
Daniel L Felch ◽  
...  

To build a coherent view of the external world, an organism needs to integrate multiple types of sensory information from different sources, a process known as multisensory integration (MSI). Previously, we showed that the temporal dependence of MSI in the optic tectum of Xenopus laevis tadpoles is mediated by the network dynamics of the recruitment of local inhibition by sensory input (Felch et al., 2016). This was one of the first cellular-level mechanisms described for MSI. Here, we expand this cellular level view of MSI by focusing on the principle of inverse effectiveness, another central feature of MSI stating that the amount of multisensory enhancement observed inversely depends on the size of unisensory responses. We show that non-linear summation of crossmodal synaptic responses, mediated by NMDA-type glutamate receptor (NMDARs) activation, form the cellular basis for inverse effectiveness, both at the cellular and behavioral levels.


Author(s):  
Torrey LS Truszkowski ◽  
Oscar A Carrillo ◽  
Julia Bleier ◽  
Carolina M Ramirez-Vizcarrondo ◽  
Daniel L Felch ◽  
...  

2012 ◽  
Vol 107 (11) ◽  
pp. 3135-3143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verena N. Buchholz ◽  
Samanthi C. Goonetilleke ◽  
W. Pieter Medendorp ◽  
Brian D. Corneil

Multisensory integration enables rapid and accurate behavior. To orient in space, sensory information registered initially in different reference frames has to be integrated with the current postural information to produce an appropriate motor response. In some postures, multisensory integration requires convergence of sensory evidence across hemispheres, which would presumably lessen or hinder integration. Here, we examined orienting gaze shifts in humans to visual, tactile, or visuotactile stimuli when the hands were either in a default uncrossed posture or a crossed posture requiring convergence across hemispheres. Surprisingly, we observed the greatest benefits of multisensory integration in the crossed posture, as indexed by reaction time (RT) decreases. Moreover, such shortening of RTs to multisensory stimuli did not come at the cost of increased error propensity. To explain these results, we propose that two accepted principles of multisensory integration, the spatial principle and inverse effectiveness, dynamically interact to aid the rapid and accurate resolution of complex sensorimotor transformations. First, early mutual inhibition of initial visual and tactile responses registered in different hemispheres reduces error propensity. Second, inverse effectiveness in the integration of the weakened visual response with the remapped tactile representation expedites the generation of the correct motor response. Our results imply that the concept of inverse effectiveness, which is usually associated with external stimulus properties, might extend to internal spatial representations that are more complex given certain body postures.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guochun Yang ◽  
Di Fu ◽  
Li Zhenghan ◽  
Haiyan Wu ◽  
Honghui Xu ◽  
...  

Multisensory integration and crossmodal attention are two of the basic mechanisms in processing multisensory inputs, and they are usually mixed. Whether these two processes are dependent or independent remains controversial. To examine the relationship between multisensory integration and crossmodal attention, we adopted modified multilevel audiovisual gender judgment paradigms and evaluated the congruency effects in reaction time (RT) and the inverse effectiveness (IE) effects. If they were dependent, the occurrence of one effect would be accompanied with that of the other. Using both morphed faces and voices, we first performed a speeded classification task, in which participants were either asked to attend to faces (experiment 1a) or attend to voices (experiment 1b); then, we performed an unspeeded rating task with faces as the targets (experiment 2). We observed both a congruency effect in RT and an IE effect in experiment 1a, a congruency effect in RT alone in experiment 1b, and an IE effect alone in experiment 2. These results indicate that the two processes are independent of each other.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Noel

AbstractWithin a multisensory context, “optimality” has been used as a benchmark evidencing interdependent sensory channels. However, “optimality” does not truly bifurcate a spectrum from suboptimal to supra-optimal – where optimal and supra-optimal, but not suboptimal, indicate integration – as supra-optimality may result from the suboptimal integration of a present unisensory stimuli and an absent one (audio = audio + absence of vision).


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