Multisensory Integration Flashcards by Eliza Konomanyi

What is multisensory integration?

Neural processes that are involved in synthesizing information from cross-modal stimulus combination in relation to the component stimuli

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How is multisensory integration assessed?

Considering the effectiveness of the cross modal stimulus combination

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What is cross-modal stimuli?

Stimuli from two or more sensory modalities or an event providing such stimuli

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What is an optimal stimulus?

A stimulus to generate a response from a neurone

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What does the stimulus cause?

An action potential and depolarisation of the neurone

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What is sensory bombarding?

When there is a combination of different senses through MSI

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What does MSI provide when there is sensory bombarding?

A unified representation of the object, environment and our body

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What are the basic principles from MSI?

When info from different senses occur close in space and time they are more likely to arise from the same object
There is a spatial and temporal window

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What is the temporal factor in MSI?

MSI is likely to occur the closer that the stimuli in the different modalities are present

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What is the spatial factor in MSI?

Spatial coincidence facilitates MSI

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What is MSI defined operationally?

A statistically significant difference between the number of impulses evoled by cross modal combinations of stimulus and the number evoked by the most effective of these stimulus individually

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How does MSI work?

Through unimodal and bimodal neurones?

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How do unimodal neurones work?

Responds to one stimulus but there is no response to from another so they do not influence each other

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How do bimodal neurones work?

Responds to two stimulus it is likely that there is influence

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What did Hartmann (1935) find?

Improvement of visual acuity by auditory stimuli in people with brain damage

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What did Gonzalo (1945) find?

Multisensory syndrome in patients with parieto-occipital cortical lesions

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Who looked at the behavioural benefits of MSI?

Stein et al, 1989

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What did Stein et al, 1989, do?

Trained cats to go towards the visual stimulus or the auditory stimulus

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What did Stein et al, 1989, find?

Performance of the cats was enhanced with crossmodal stimulation

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Where is the superior colliculus located?

In the midbrain, superior to the brainstem and inferior to the thalamus

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What is the structure of the superior collliculus?

7 layefs of alternating grey and white matter. High quantity of MS neurones

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What is the role of the superior colliculus?

Motor control, orientation behaviours of the eyes, ears and head

What is a consequence of superior colliculus disruption?

Disturbances in visual attention, disturbances in orientation behaviours, loss of the ability to respond appropriately to contralateral touch and auditory stimuli

What are the three key behaviour functions of the superior colliculus?

Integrating sensory modalities, sensorimotor transduction, remapping

How does integrating sensory modalities work?

Association of the sensory inputs to redirect the organs and where the input originates from and also localising the source of the stimulus

How does sensorimotor transduction work?

Transforms incoming sensory input into motor actions and intermixes sensory inputs and motor circuits

How does remapping work?

Alignment of different sensory motor maps (receptive fields and movement fields in register) and with the use of multisensory neurones

How are visual coordinates based?

On the layout of the retina

How are somatosensory coordinates arranged?

The skin surface

What are the different amounts of the cortex dedicated to according to the somatosensory map?

Processing touch input from parts of the body

What is the principle of multisensory integration in superior colliculus neurones when the cues are weak?

The neural computation involved is superadditive so the response will exceed the more vigorious component response and sum

What is the principle of multisensory integration in superior colliculus neurones when the cues are stronger?

The cues are more effective, the unisensory component responses more vigorously and the integrated responses are small. The computation responses are additive.

What is the principle of multisensory integration in superior colliculus neurones when the enhancements become smaller?

Both additive and subadditive computation produces responses exceeding the most vigorous component

What does superadditive, additive and subadditive refer to?

The multisensory integration's relative magnitude

What are the 4 principles in multisensory integration?

Multisensory enhancement, spatial congruency, temporal congruency, inverse effectiveness

What is multisensory enhancement?

A situation where the response to the cross-modal response is most effective of its component stimuli

What do large enhancements due to in multisensory enhancement?

The superadditive combinations of cross-modal influences

What has to be linked when integration of the different sensory stimuli occurs?

Space and time

What receptive fields do multisensory neurones have?

Multiple excitatory neurones for each modality that it responds to

What register is receptive fields in?

Spatial

What does the location of the event determine?

Whether the neurone is activated

What is the magnitude of integrated responses sensitive to in temporal congruency?

Temporal overlap

When can integration take place in despite of?

The different response latencies, conduction speeds and onset of visual, auditory and somatosensory stimuli

What does inverse effectiveness refer to?

How multisensory enhancement is inversely related to the effectiveness of the individual cues that are combined

What do weak cues evokes?

Few neural impulses where their responses are subject to substantial enhancement when the stimuli are combined

What happens to individual cues that are highly salient?

They are easily detected and localised so there is less need to be integrated

What is a sensory illusion?

Illusions based on the assumptions that detecting something by different senses at the same time means they have been caused by the same event

What occurs during audition + vision illusions?

Ventriloquist effect and the McGurk effect

What occurs during the ventriloquist effect?

The visual cue is unambiguous so the visual capture reliably occcurs

What occurs during the McGurk effect?

Phoneme production is dubbed with a video of the person speaking a different phoneme. Result being the perception of a third different phoneme

What occurs during vision and touch illusion?

The rubber hand illusion

What occurs during the rubber hand illusion?

Visual and tactile information is applied at the same time. Vision and proprioception combines in judging where our body is

Who looked at vision and vestibular?

Stein and Meredith, 1993

What did Stein and Meredith find?

When visual cues are small, the orientation of an illuminated line appears to change to match the effects of rotation