Temporal binding window between three different sensory modalities: Auditory, visual, and tactile

Abstract

Multisensory integration is crucial to perceptual understanding, but cues from multiple modalities do not necessarily arrive at the brain simultaneously. The window of time in which sensory inputs can be interpreted as simultaneous is termed the “temporal binding window” (TBW). Evidence suggests unimodal temporal discrimination is altered in a series of neurodevelopmental disorders but its relationship to perceptual timing of multisensory events (auditory, visual, and tactile) is not known, even in healthy populations. The purpose of this study was to characterize temporal integration of sensory modalities within a young healthy population. Twenty-five adults participated in TBW measurements with three different modalities. 100-ms stimuli (auditory: beep; visual: flash; tactile: vibration) were presented with various onset asynchrony (-500 to 500 ms) between two stimuli (AV: auditory-visual; AT: auditory-tactile; VT: visual-tactile). Participants were instructed to select “simultaneous” or “asynchronous” responses. Results show that the TBW for the AV condition ranged from 222 to 689 ms (mean ± SD = 418 ± 103), the AT condition ranged from 164 to 666 ms (376 ± 130), and the VT condition ranged from 70 to 751 ms (279 ± 131). These findings suggest that deficits in multisensory temporal function may factor into perceptual and cognitive weaknesses that characterize clinical disorders, raising the possibility that it may be a contributing pathologic factor in these conditions.