Abstract
To assess uni- and multisensory development in humans, uni- and crossmodal event-related potential (ERP) refractory period effects were investigated. Forty-one children from 4 to 12 years of age and 15 young adults performed a bimodal oddball task with frequent and rare visual and auditory stimuli presented with two different interstimulus intervals (ISIs). Amplitudes of the visual and auditory ERPs were modulated as a function of the age of the participants, the modality of the preceding stimulus (same vs. different) and the preceding ISI (1000 or 2000 ms). While unimodal refractory period effects were observed in all age groups, crossmodal refractory period effects differed among age groups. Early crossmodal interactions (<150 ms) existing in the youngest age group (4–6 years) disappeared, while later crossmodal interactions (>150 ms) emerged with a parietal topography in older children and adults. Our results are compatible with the intersensory differentiation and the multisensory perceptual narrowing approach of multisensory development. Moreover, our data suggest that uni- and multisensory development run in parallel with unimodal development leading.
Highlights
Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to assess the neuronal mechanisms of multisensory interactions (Stein and Meredith, 1993; Driver and Noesselt, 2008; Senkowski et al, 2008) and to investigate neurocognitive development (e.g., Courchesne, 1978; De Haan and Nelson, 1997; Molfese and Molfese, 2000; Nelson and Monk, 2001)
Since the ERP approach chosen by these authors has been criticized (Gondan et al, 2005), we decided to adapt a paradigm that has fruitfully been used to study unisensory development (Cheour and Näätänen, 1998; Coch et al, 2005): When two stimuli are presented in succession, the amplitudes of ERPs elicited by the second stimulus are decreased as a function of the interstimulus interval (ISI)
For the visual stimuli, RT depended on the preceding ISI and the preceding modality, but these effects varied by the age group [ISI × Modality Transition (MT) × Age group, F(3, 47) = 2.85, p < 0.05]
Summary
Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to assess the neuronal mechanisms of multisensory interactions (Stein and Meredith, 1993; Driver and Noesselt, 2008; Senkowski et al, 2008) and to investigate neurocognitive development (e.g., Courchesne, 1978; De Haan and Nelson, 1997; Molfese and Molfese, 2000; Nelson and Monk, 2001). Brett-Green et al (2008) compared ERPs to bimodal stimuli and to the sum of ERPs elicited by the comprising unimodal events They detected multisensory interactions between the auditory and the somatosensory system in children aged 6 to 13 years. Unisensory ERP refractory periods have been used in humans to study the development of sensory systems (Cheour and Näätänen, 1998; Coch et al, 2005) and to understand the functional changes of sensory cortices following sensory loss (Neville et al, 1983). Coch et al (2005) used auditory and visual refractory periods (with ISIs between 360 and 2000 ms) to investigate the developmental trajectory of the auditory and visual system between the age of 6 and 8 years They reported adultlike patterns of unimodal refractory period effects in school-age children
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