Temporal dynamics of auditory-visual interactions as revealed by event-related potentials to bimodal stimuli with different onset asynchrony
Single Paper Presentation
Matthias Gondan
Experimental Psychology, University of Regensburg, Germany
Matthias Dinnbier
Experimental Psychology, University of Regensburg, Germany Mark W. Greenlee
Experimental Psychology, University of Regensburg, Germany Abstract ID Number: 122 Full text:
Not available Last modified:
March 17, 2006
Presentation date: 06/18/2006 4:00 PM in Hamilton Building, Foyer
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Abstract
In a very basic paradigm of multisensory research, event-related potentials (ERPs) are measured while participants observe a series of e.g. auditory, visual, and bimodal auditory-visual stimuli. In this approach, the ERP to auditory-visual stimuli (AV) is compared to the sum of the ERPs to auditory (A) and visual (V) stimuli: AV–(A+V). If the result differs from zero, it is concluded that audition and vision interact at some processing stage. Using this method, several studies have demonstrated very early multisensory interactions at processing stages which were previously considered as unisensory. The nature of these interactions was interpreted as a modulation of activity in one sensory channel due to the concurrent presentation of a stimulus in the other sensory channel. We tested this hypothesis using bimodal auditory-visual stimuli with different onset asynchronies (0, 30, 60, 90, 120 ms), either with a leading auditory or a leading visual stimulus.
Results indicate that the ERP responses to synchronous and asynchronous stimuli are different. More refined analyses revealed a specific ERP component, related to the synchronous auditory-visual presentation. It can be concluded that auditory-visual interactions occur within a very limited time window, reflecting short-lived activity in supramodal neural generators.
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