Multisensory Representation of Peripe onal Space

Abstract

Abstract Humans can represent visual objects in nearby (peripersonal) space through multisensory (visual-auditory-tactile) integrative processes, as indicated by the large body of evidence that has been recently accumulated (Spence & Driver, 2004). In nonhuman primates, multisensory integration at the single-neuron level is a frequent feature of spatial representation, especially in the coding of near peripersonal space, that is, the sector of space that closely surrounds the animal’s body parts (Duhamel et al., 1991, 1998; Graziano & Gross, 1995, 1998; Hyvarinen & Poranen, 1974; Rizzolatti et al., 1981, 1998). Since the 1990s, neuropsychological and neurophysiological research has provided comparative support to the notion that multisensory coding of near peripersonal space in both species shares several similarities at a functional and, to some extent, at a neuroanatomical level (Bremmer, Schlack, Duhamel, et al., 2001; Bremmer, Schlack, Shah, et al., 2001; Calvert, Spence, & Stein, 2004; Ladavas, 2002; Macaluso, Driver, & Frith, 2003; Weiss et al., 2003).