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Abstract
Our brain adapts to discrepancies in the sensory inputs. One example is provided by the ventriloquism effect, experienced when the sight and sound of an object are displaced. Here the discrepant multisensory stimuli not only result in a biased localization of the sound, but also recalibrate the perception of subsequent unisensory acoustic information in the so-called ventriloquism aftereffect. This aftereffect has been linked to memory-related processes based on its parallels to general sequential effects in perceptual decision making experiments and insights obtained in neuroimaging studies. For example, we have recently implied memory-related medial parietal regions in the trial-by-trial ventriloquism aftereffect. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the trial-by-trial (or immediate) ventriloquism aftereffect is indeed susceptible to manipulations interfering with working memory. Across three experiments we systematically manipulated the temporal delays between stimuli and response for either the ventriloquism or the aftereffect trials, or added a sensory-motor masking trial in between. Our data reveal no significant impact of either of these manipulations on the aftereffect, suggesting that the recalibration reflected by the trial-by-trial ventriloquism aftereffect is surprisingly resilient to manipulations interfering with memory-related processes.
Highlights
Our brain adapts to discrepancies in the sensory inputs
We found that none of the manipulations led to a consistent and robust change in the aftereffect bias, suggesting that the ventriloquism aftereffect is more robust to memory-manipulations as expected from similar studies on serial dependencies in serial perception
In the AV trials, spatially localized (5 locations: − 16°, − 8°, 0°, + 8°, +16°) sounds were accompanied with spatially localized random-dot patterns presented at either the same location or a range of spatial discrepancies (ΔVA). This allowed us to quantify the ventriloquism effect, reflecting the bias induced by the visual stimulus on the perceived location of the simultaneous sound
Summary
Our brain adapts to discrepancies in the sensory inputs. One example is provided by the ventriloquism effect, experienced when the sight and sound of an object are displaced. We found that medial parietal cortices reflect the persistent encoding of previous multisensory stimuli and are predictive of the trial-wise a ftereffect[7] This led us to speculate that brain regions traditionally implied in spatial and working memory[10,11,12,13] contribute to the aftereffect, for example by maintaining a representation of the previous sensory evidence between trials and mediating its influence on the perception of subsequent stimuli. Such a role of parietal regions in the ventriloquism aftereffect has been suggested by other studies, and possibly the same parietal processes contribute to both the immediate and long term effects[14,15]. The role of memory-related processes in the trial-wise ventriloquism aftereffect remains unclear
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