Gamma-band responses (GBRs) are hypothesized to reflect neuronal synchronous activity related to activation of object representations. However, it is not known whether synchrony in the gamma range is also related to multisensory object processing. We investigated the effect of semantic congruity between auditory and visual information on the human GBR. The paradigm consisted of a simultaneous p...

Infants learn to use auditory and visual information to organize the sensory world into identifiable objects with particular locations. Here we use a behavioural method to examine infants' use of harmonicity cues to auditory object perception in a multisensory context. Sounds emitted by different objects sum in the air and the auditory system must figure out which parts of the complex waveform ...

We examined the relationship between three discrimination skills (visual, visual matching-to-sample, and auditory-visual) and four stimulus modalities (object, picture, spoken, and video) in assessing preferences of leisure activities for 7 adults with developmental disabilities. Three discrimination skills were measured using the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities Test. Three participants ...

The emphasis is put on the hierarchical structure, independence and sparseness aspects of auditory signal representations in high-dimensional spaces, so as to define the components of auditory objects. The concept of an auditory object and its neural representation is introduced. An illustrative application then follows, consisting in the analysis of various auditory signals : speech, music and...

The human visual system is divided into two pathways specialized for the processing of either objects or spatial locations. Neuroanatomical studies in monkeys have suggested that a similar specialization may also divide auditory cortex into two such pathways. We used the identical stimulus material in two experimental sessions in which subjects had to either identify auditory objects or their l...

Attending to a visual stimulus feature, such as color or motion, enhances the processing of that feature in the visual cortex. Moreover, the processing of the attended object's other, unattended, features is also enhanced. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that attentional modulation in the auditory system may also exhibit such feature- and object-specific effects. Spe...

Mental imagery is a complex cognitive process that resembles the experience of perceiving an object when this object is not physically present to the senses. It has been shown that, depending on the sensory nature of the object, mental imagery also involves correspondent sensory neural mechanisms. However, it remains unclear which areas of the brain subserve supramodal imagery processes that ar...

Anecdotally, it has been reported that individuals with acquired prosopagnosia compensate for their inability to recognize faces by using other person identity cues such as hair, gait or the voice. Are they therefore superior at the use of non-face cues, specifically voices, to person identity? Here, we empirically measure person and object identity recognition in a patient with acquired prosop...

In the "flash-beep illusion," a single light flash is perceived as multiple flashes when presented in close temporal proximity to multiple auditory beeps. Accounts of this illusion argue that temporal auditory information interferes with visual information because temporal acuity is better in audition than vision. However, it may also be that whenever there are multiple sensory inputs, the inte...

In humans, as well as most animal species, perception of object motion is critical to successful interaction with the surrounding environment. Yet, as the observer also moves, the retinal projections of the various motion components add to each other and extracting accurate object motion becomes computationally challenging. Recent psychophysical studies have demonstrated that observers use a fl...