Picture yourself on a crowded sideway with people moving around. The acoustic and visual signals generated by the people provide you with complementary information about their location and motion. Thus far, it is not well understood how such inputs from different sensory channels are integrated. In this symposium, we present recent studies on multisensory processing and neural synchrony using high-density EEG recordings in humans and local field potential and single unit recordings in primates. Data from these studies suggest that coupled oscillatory activity across a wide range of frequencies may serve to link neural signals across uni- and multisensory regions and to express the degree of crossmodal matching of stimulus-related information. The view that we advocate has several implications: we believe that the investigation of neural synchrony during crossmodal processing allows developing new research approaches and experimental strategies; furthermore, new accounts for abnormal variants like synesthesia and autism can be developed. Thus, we believe that the study of synchronization phenomena may lead to a new view on multisensory processing which considers the dynamic interplay of neural populations as a key to crossmodal integration.

Speakers:
Andreas K. Engel (University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany)
Christoph Kayser (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany)
Peter Lakatos (Nathan S. Kline Insitute, Orangeburg, NY, U.S.)
Daniel Senkowski (University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany)
Peter König (University Osnabrück, Germany)