Abstract
Multisensory integration (MSI), in which sensory signals from different modalities are unified, is necessary for our comprehensive perception of and effective adaptation to the objects and events around us. However, individuals with schizophrenia suffer from impairments in MSI, which could explain typical symptoms like hallucination and reality distortion. Because the neural correlates of aberrant MSI in schizophrenia help us understand the physiognomy of this psychiatric disorder, we performed a systematic review of the current research on this subject. The literature search concerned investigated MSI in diagnosed schizophrenia patients compared to healthy controls using brain imaging. Seventeen of 317 identified studies were finally included. To assess risk of bias, the Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment was used, and the review was written according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA). The results indicated that multisensory processes in schizophrenia are associated with aberrant, mainly reduced, neural activity in several brain regions, as measured by event-related potentials, oscillations, activity and connectivity. The conclusion is that a fronto-temporal region, comprising the frontal inferior gyrus, middle temporal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus/sulcus, along with the fusiform gyrus and dorsal visual stream in the occipital-parietal lobe are possible key regions of deficient MSI in schizophrenia.
Highlights
We constantly encounter an abundance of sensory information that has to be successfully organized for us to be able to make sense of it
This is the first systematic review examining how the neural corre lates during multisensory integration differ between individuals with schizophrenia and the healthy population
We found aberrant and reduced neural activity measured with EEG, MEG and Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), presumably reflecting deficits in multisensory integration in schizophrenia
Summary
We constantly encounter an abundance of sensory information that has to be successfully organized for us to be able to make sense of it. During a conversation with a friend in a busy restaurant, you will perceptually process your friend's voice (i.e., audi tory stimuli) and articulations (i.e., visual stimuli) concurrently and rapidly to integrate them. This integration will increase your speech perception because MSI enhances perceptual acuity and improves detection, discrimination and response speed (Wallace et al, 2020). Some focus on multisensory illusions that show how information from different sensory modalities can fuse together into one percept. One example is the redundant signals effect (RSE), which shows that responses are faster and more precise with stimuli presented in multiple sensory modalities compared to a single modality (Her shenson, 1962; Kinchla, 1974). Multisensory facilitation is maximal when stimuli from different modalities are presented at the same time (temporal rule) at around the same place (spatial rule), and decreases with increased interstimulus onset (Stone et al, 2014)
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