Direct Human Intracranial Recordings Reveal Early Multisensory Integration in the Ventral Visual Stream
Poster Presentation

Sophie Molholm
The Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory of The Nathan Kline Institute

*Pejman Sehatpour
The Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory of The Nathan Kline Institute

*Ashesh Mehta
Department of Neurosurgery, Cornell Medical Center

*Beth Higgins
The Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory of The Nathan Kline Institute

*Marina Shpaner
The Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory of The Nathan Kline Institute

*Antigona Martinez
The Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory of The Nathan Kline Institute

*Theodore Schwartz
Department of Neurosurgery, Cornell Medical Center

*John J. Foxe
The Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory of The Nathan Kline Institute

     Abstract ID Number: 153
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: March 21, 2005
     Presentation date: 06/07/2005 3:00 PM in MART Auditorium
     (View Schedule)

Abstract
The different sensory elements of an object provide multiple and oftentimes redundant cues to its identity. A key question is when and where these multiple sources of information are integrated. In a previous scalp-recorded electrical study we found auditory effects on visual object recognition processes that were source localized to the lateral occipital complex (Molholm et al., 2004). However, scalp-recorded ERPs provide an indirect measure of the underlying neural generators. Here we used intracranial recordings to acquire precise localization of auditory-visual interactions in cortical regions associated with visual processing. Subjects were presented with randomly interleaved simple auditory and visual stimuli presented alone and simultaneously, while intracranial ERP recordings were acquired. Our data showed modulation of the visual response when a visual stimulus was paired with an auditory stimulus compared to when it was presented alone, in regions of the fusiform gyrus and lateral occipital complex. What’s more, this modulation occurred in the timeframe of visual object recognition processes.

Molholm, S., Ritter, W., Javitt, J.C., & Foxe, J.J. (2004). Multisensory visual-auditory object recognition in humans: a high-density electrical mapping study. Cerebral Cortex, 14, 452-65.