Tactile Temporal Processing in the Auditory Cortex

Nadia Bolognini, Costanza Papagno, Angelo Maravita
Poster
Time: 2009-06-29  11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Last modified: 2009-06-04

Abstract


Perception of the outside world results from integration of information simultaneously derived via multiple senses. Increasing evidence suggests that the neural underpinnings of multisensory integration extend into the early stages of sensory processing. In the present study we investigated whether the superior temporal gyrus (STG), an auditory modality-specific area, is critical for processing of tactile events. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied over the left STG and the left primary somatosensory cortex (SI) at different time intervals (60 ms, 120 ms, 180 ms) during a tactile temporal discrimination task (experiment 1) and a tactile spatial discrimination task (experiment 2). Tactile temporal processing was disrupted when TMS was applied to SI at 60 ms after tactile presentation, confirming the modality-specificity of this region. Crucially, TMS over STG also affected tactile temporal processing but at 180 ms delay. In both cases, the impairment was limited to the controlateral touches and was due to reduced perceptual sensitivity. Instead, tactile spatial processing was impaired only by TMS over SI at 60-120 ms. These findings demonstrate the causal involvement of auditory areas in processing the duration of somatosensory events, suggesting that STG might play a supramodal role in temporal perception. Furthermore, the involvement of auditory cortex in somatosensory processing supports the view that multisensory integration occurs at an early stage of cortical processing.

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