Audiovisual temporal fusion in 6-month-old infants

Autor: Franziska Kopp
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol 9, Iss C, Pp 56-67 (2014)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1878-9293
1878-9307
DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2014.01.001
Popis: The aim of this study was to investigate neural dynamics of audiovisual temporal fusion processes in 6-month-old infants using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). In a habituation-test paradigm, infants did not show any behavioral signs of discrimination of an audiovisual asynchrony of 200 ms, indicating perceptual fusion. In a subsequent EEG experiment, audiovisual synchronous stimuli and stimuli with a visual delay of 200 ms were presented in random order. In contrast to the behavioral data, brain activity differed significantly between the two conditions. Critically, N1 and P2 latency delays were not observed between synchronous and fused items, contrary to previously observed N1 and P2 latency delays between synchrony and perceived asynchrony. Hence, temporal interaction processes in the infant brain between the two sensory modalities varied as a function of perceptual fusion versus asynchrony perception. The visual recognition components Pb and Nc were modulated prior to sound onset, emphasizing the importance of anticipatory visual events for the prediction of auditory signals. Results suggest mechanisms by which young infants predictively adjust their ongoing neural activity to the temporal synchrony relations to be expected between vision and audition.
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