Abstract
Perception of our environment is a multisensory experience; information from different sensory systems like the auditory, visual and tactile is constantly integrated. Complex tasks that require high temporal and spatial precision of multisensory integration put strong demands on the underlying networks but it is largely unknown how task experience shapes multisensory processing. Long-term musical training is an excellent model for brain plasticity because it shapes the human brain at functional and structural levels, affecting a network of brain areas. In the present study we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate how audio-tactile perception is integrated in the human brain and if musicians show enhancement of the corresponding activation compared to non-musicians. Using a paradigm that allowed the investigation of combined and separate auditory and tactile processing, we found a multisensory incongruency response, generated in frontal, cingulate and cerebellar regions, an auditory mismatch response generated mainly in the auditory cortex and a tactile mismatch response generated in frontal and cerebellar regions. The influence of musical training was seen in the audio-tactile as well as in the auditory condition, indicating enhanced higher-order processing in musicians, while the sources of the tactile MMN were not influenced by long-term musical training. Consistent with the predictive coding model, more basic, bottom-up sensory processing was relatively stable and less affected by expertise, whereas areas for top-down models of multisensory expectancies were modulated by training.
Highlights
Perception of our environment is a multisensory experience as information from different sensory systems like auditory, visual and tactile is constantly integrated
As sensory processing is modulated by expertise, long-term musical training is an excellent model for brain plasticity driven by the multisensory experience of learning to play a musical instrument
We observed a clear influence of musical training on the networks for audio-tactile integration: the musicians compared to the non-musicians show an increased activation in the left hemisphere including cerebellum, uncus, and premotor cortex, which is consistent with findings of increased activity in these areas during complex multisensory musical cognition [55]. This corresponds to the previously discussed role of the cerebellum in multisensory processing, and the present results suggest that its activity in response to multisensory stimuli is modulated by expertise
Summary
Perception of our environment is a multisensory experience as information from different sensory systems like auditory, visual and tactile is constantly integrated. If we see and hear somebody talk, we process the combined information of mouth/lip movement and speech. A famous example of inconcruency between the auditory and the visual information is the McGurk effect in audiovisual speech perception [1]. It is crucial to unravel the neuronal underpinnings of multisensory processing in order to understand perception as it happens in our natural environment. As sensory processing is modulated by expertise, long-term musical training is an excellent model for brain plasticity driven by the multisensory experience of learning to play a musical instrument. Musical training shapes the human brain on functional and structural levels, affecting a network of brain areas [2,3,4]
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