Multisensory interactions between vestibular, visual and somatosensory signals

Autor: Ferrè, Elisa Raffaella, Walther, L.E., Haggard, P.
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS ONE
PLoS ONE, Vol 10, Iss 4, p e0124573 (2015)
ISSN: 1932-6203
Popis: Vestibular inputs are constantly processed and integrated with signals from other sensory\ud modalities, such as vision and touch. The multiply-connected nature of vestibular cortical\ud anatomy led us to investigate whether vestibular signals could participate in a multi-way interaction with visual and somatosensory perception. We used signal detection methods to\ud identify whether vestibular stimulation might interact with both visual and somatosensory\ud events in a detection task. Participants were instructed to detect near-threshold somatosensory stimuli that were delivered to the left index finger in one half of experimental trials. A visual signal occurred close to the finger in half of the trials, independent of somatosensory\ud stimuli. A novel Near infrared caloric vestibular stimulus (NirCVS) was used to artificially activate the vestibular organs. Sham stimulations were used to control for non-specific effects\ud of NirCVS. We found that both visual and vestibular events increased somatosensory sensitivity. Critically, we found no evidence for supra-additive multisensory enhancement when\ud both visual and vestibular signals were administered together: in fact, we found a trend towards sub-additive interaction. The results are compatible with a vestibular role in somatosensory gain regulation.
Databáze: OpenAIRE