True and Perceived Synchrony are Preferentially Associated With Particular Sensory Pairings.

Jean-Paul Noel,Erik Van Der Burg,Emily Orchard-Mills,Mark T Wallace,David Alais

doi:10.1038/srep17467

Abstract

Perception and behavior are fundamentally shaped by the integration of different sensory modalities into unique multisensory representations, a process governed by spatio-temporal correspondence. Prior work has characterized temporal perception using the point in time at which subjects are most likely to judge multisensory stimuli to be simultaneous (PSS) and the temporal binding window (TBW) over which participants are likely to do so. Here we examine the relationship between the PSS and the TBW within and between individuals, and within and between three sensory combinations: audiovisual, audiotactile and visuotactile. We demonstrate that TBWs correlate within individuals and across multisensory pairings, but PSSs do not. Further, we reveal that while the audiotactile and audiovisual pairings show tightly related TBWs, they also exhibit a differential relationship with respect to true and perceived multisensory synchrony. Thus, audiotactile and audiovisual temporal processing share mechanistic features yet are respectively functionally linked to objective and subjective synchrony.

Highlights

Among other factors, the spatial[1,2,3] and temporal[3,4,5] features of the stimuli in our environment play a critical role in the integration and binding of information across the different senses
Our goals were to reveal how temporal binding window (TBW) relate to both true synchrony and subjective synchrony, and to reveal how prior exposure can influence the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) and TBW
The results of the current study demonstrate that temporal binding of sensory signals from different modalities is strongly determined by intrinsic factors likely involving shared neural resources

Summary

Introduction

The spatial[1,2,3] and temporal[3,4,5] features of the stimuli in our environment play a critical role in the integration and binding of information across the different senses. Despite the utility and ubiquity of the PSS and TBW as tools to index various facets of multisensory temporal function[17,18,19,20], the relationships between these measures across individuals and sensory combinations have not been systematically studied Such an analysis has the potential to reveal mechanistic commonalities (as well as differences) between these indices, and the ability to better elucidate whether certain sensory combinations and their binding is better rooted in objective versus subjective time. The SJ task is a simple task in which participants are asked to judge the simultaneity or asynchrony of a multisensory stimulus pairing presented in close temporal correspondence In this task, one can derive both a PSS and TBW based on point and distributional measures. A particular individual’s PSS is a measure of the distance between true synchrony and that subject’s perception of synchrony, while the deviation of that particular subject’s PPS and the mean PPS of the whole sample (which is operationally taken to reflect statistical synchrony) is a measure of the distance between that subject’s perception of synchrony and subjective synchrony

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion