Alvarado Juan Carlos, Vaughan J William, Stanford Terrence R, Stein Barry E
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA.
J Neurophysiol. 2007 May;97(5):3193-205. doi: 10.1152/jn.00018.2007. Epub 2007 Feb 28.
The present study suggests that the neural computations used to integrate information from different senses are distinct from those used to integrate information from within the same sense. Using superior colliculus neurons as a model, it was found that multisensory integration of cross-modal stimulus combinations yielded responses that were significantly greater than those evoked by the best component stimulus. In contrast, unisensory integration of within-modal stimulus pairs yielded responses that were similar to or less than those evoked by the best component stimulus. This difference is exemplified by the disproportionate representations of superadditive responses during multisensory integration and the predominance of subadditive responses during unisensory integration. These observations suggest that different rules have evolved for integrating sensory information, one (unisensory) reflecting the inherent characteristics of the individual sense and, the other (multisensory), unique supramodal characteristics designed to enhance the salience of the initiating event.
本研究表明，用于整合来自不同感官信息的神经计算与用于整合来自同一感官内信息的神经计算不同。以中脑上丘神经元为模型，研究发现跨模态刺激组合的多感官整合产生的反应显著大于最佳成分刺激所诱发的反应。相比之下，模态内刺激对的单感官整合产生的反应与最佳成分刺激所诱发的反应相似或更小。这种差异体现在多感官整合过程中超加性反应的不成比例表征以及单感官整合过程中亚加性反应的占主导地位。这些观察结果表明，进化出了不同的规则来整合感官信息，一种（单感官）反映了个体感官的固有特征，另一种（多感官）则具有独特的超模态特征，旨在增强起始事件的显著性。
