Multisensory interaction: Influence of spatial visual cues on auditory detection

Abstract

Recent physiological and psychological studies suggest spatiotopic maps of auditory space often build up by groups of multisensory neurons. At this neuronal level stimulus representations of different modalities seem to be transformed into a common coordinate system. A multimodal stimulus may produce enhancement, depression, or no interaction effect on the cell activity, depending on its certain spatiotemporal combination. In several experiments the influence of visual cues on auditory perception was examined. The results indicate a dependence on spatial and temporal parameters. [Work supported by DFG.]