Effect of Audiovisual Cross-Modal Conflict during Working Memory Tasks: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study.

Jiahong Cui,Susumu Yoshida,Daisuke Sawamura,Hiroshi Miura,Kazuki Yoshida,Yoshinobu Tanabe,Ryuji Saito,Masaaki Sugi,Yukina Tokikuni,Satoshi Sakuraba,Akihiro Watanabe,Shinya Sakai

doi:10.3390/brainsci12030349

Abstract

Cognitive conflict effects are well characterized within unimodality. However, little is known about cross-modal conflicts and their neural bases. This study characterizes the two types of visual and auditory cross-modal conflicts through working memory tasks and brain activities. The participants consisted of 31 healthy, right-handed, young male adults. The Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) and the Paced Visual Serial Addition Test (PVSAT) were performed under distractor and no distractor conditions. Distractor conditions comprised two conditions in which either the PASAT or PVSAT was the target task, and the other was used as a distractor stimulus. Additionally, oxygenated hemoglobin (Oxy-Hb) concentration changes in the frontoparietal regions were measured during tasks. The results showed significantly lower PASAT performance under distractor conditions than under no distractor conditions, but not in the PVSAT. Oxy-Hb changes in the bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and inferior parietal cortex (IPC) significantly increased in the PASAT with distractor compared with no distractor conditions, but not in the PVSAT. Furthermore, there were significant positive correlations between Δtask performance accuracy and ΔOxy-Hb in the bilateral IPC only in the PASAT. Visual cross-modal conflict significantly impairs auditory task performance, and bilateral VLPFC and IPC are key regions in inhibiting visual cross-modal distractors.

Highlights

The sensory environment in daily life is complex, and we commonly receive information from multiple sources through multiple sensory modalities
Since there was a significant difference between Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) and Paced Visual Serial Addition Test (PVSAT), a pairedsample t-test was used to identify the existence of the cross-modal interfering effect by comparing the difference between [PASAT with distractor–PASAT] and [PVSAT with distractor–PVSAT]
Brain Activity Results Our results showed no significant difference between the two types of tasks in all region of interest (ROI) (p > 0.05)

Summary

Introduction

The sensory environment in daily life is complex, and we commonly receive information from multiple sources through multiple sensory modalities. In the incongruent information from unimodal visual or auditory stimuli or cross-modal audiovisual stimuli, unnecessary task-irrelevant information (e.g., advertising pops up while browsing a website, making a phone call while driving) seriously affects the processing of necessary information [1,2]. To resolve this conflict, cognitive control plays an important role in enhancing the processing of task-relevant information and suppressing task-irrelevant information [3,4]. Cognitive control is the process by which goals or plans influence behavior that can inhibit automatic responses and influence working memory (WM) [4–6] It connects the processing of incoming sensory input and ensures that the actions performed are appropriate for the current environment [6]. In the top-down processing of cognitive control, previous neuroimaging studies have suggested that a network of prefrontal and parietal brain regions provides preparatory top-down control over the sensory cortex to prioritize task-relevant processing [9,10]

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