Ramos-Estebanez Ciro, Merabet Lotfi B, Machii Katsuyuki, Fregni Felipe, Thut Gregor, Wagner Timothy A, Romei Vicenzo, Amedi Amir, Pascual-Leone Alvaro
Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
J Neurosci. 2007 Apr 11;27(15):4178-81. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5468-06.2007.
Crossmodal sensory interactions serve to integrate behaviorally relevant sensory stimuli. In this study, we investigated the effect of modulating crossmodal interactions between visual and somatosensory stimuli that in isolation do not reach perceptual awareness. When a subthreshold somatosensory stimulus was delivered within close spatiotemporal congruency to the expected site of perception of a phosphene, a subthreshold transcranial magnetic stimulation pulse delivered to the occipital cortex evoked a visual percept. The results suggest that under subthreshold conditions of visual and somatosensory stimulation, crossmodal interactions presented in a spatially and temporally specific manner can sum up to become behaviorally significant. These interactions may reflect an underlying anatomical connectivity and become further enhanced by attention modulation mechanisms.
跨模态感觉交互作用有助于整合与行为相关的感觉刺激。在本研究中，我们调查了调节视觉和体感刺激之间的跨模态交互作用的效果，这些刺激单独出现时不会达到感知觉意识水平。当一个阈下体感刺激在时空上与预期的光幻视感知部位紧密一致时，施加到枕叶皮层的阈下经颅磁刺激脉冲会诱发视觉感知。结果表明，在视觉和体感刺激的阈下条件下，以空间和时间特异性方式呈现的跨模态交互作用可以累加起来，变得具有行为学意义。这些交互作用可能反映了潜在的解剖学连接，并通过注意力调节机制得到进一步增强。
