Temporal recalibration in vision requires location-based binding

Abstract

Occupying the same location and occurring at the same time are the essential spatial and temporal factors for different features of a natural event or object to be integrated. Audio-visual temporal recalibration, as a temporal integration mechanism, refers to the brain's capacity to perceive simultaneity by adjusting for differential delays in the transmission of auditory and visual signals. Co-localization of auditory and visual information, however, is found not to be necessary for audio-visual temporal recalibration to occur. Here, we show that after exposure to a time lag between a visual flash and a visual collision, simultaneity responses were shifted toward an adapt lag in a bound condition where the flash and collision belonged to the same object but not in a separate condition where the flash and collision belonged to spatially separated objects. The results demonstrate that location-based binding is a requisite for temporal recalibration within the visual modality. Our finding suggests that the brain takes the modality difference in object localization into consideration when integrating temporally asynchronous signals.