Multisensory Integration Uses a Real-Time Unisensory–Multisensory Transform

Multisensory Integration: Space, Time and Superadditivity

The superior colliculus generates and controls eye and head movements based on signals from different senses. The latest research on this structure enhances our understanding of the mechanisms of multisensory integration in the brain.

Multisensory Integration: A Late Bloomer

Under many circumstances, human adults integrate information from different sensory modalities, such as vision and hearing, in a statistically optimal fashion. New results suggest that optimal multisensory integration only develops in middle childhood.

Real-time Subsystem Integration

Lab 4: Multisensory integration

We first present subjects with visual stimuli v: a low contrast Gaussian blob, very quickly flashed at some position in space xv. The subjects are asked to localize the stimulus position x. We find that the subjects estimates are unbiased on average but display some variability from trial to trial. Their estimates P (x|v) can be modelled using a gaussian distribution with mean xv and variabilit...

Facilitation of multisensory integration

Whenever two or more sensory inputs are highly consistent in one or more dimension(s), observers will be more likely to perceive them as a single multisensory event rather than as separate unimodal events. For audiovisual speech, but not for other noncommunicative events, participants exhibit a “unity effect,” whereby they are less sensitive to temporal asynchrony (i.e., that are more likely to...