Department of Psychology Harvard University 1118 William James Hall 33 Kirkland Street Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2010 Mar;52(2):181-9. doi: 10.1002/dev.20417.
Behavioral work demonstrates human infants are sensitive to a host of intersensory properties and this sensitivity promotes early learning and memory. However, little is known regarding the neural basis of this ability in infants. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) with infants and adults, we show that during passive viewing auditory evoked brain responses are increased with the presence of simultaneous visual stimulation. Results converge with previous adult neuroimaging studies, single-cell recordings in nonhuman animals, and behavioral studies with human infants to provide evidence for an elevated status of multisensory stimulation in infancy. Furthermore, these results may provide a neural marker of multisensory audio-visual processing in infants that can be used to test developmental theories of how information is integrated across the senses to form a unitary perception of the world.
行为研究表明，人类婴儿对各种感觉间属性很敏感，这种敏感性促进了早期学习和记忆。然而，对于婴儿在这方面的能力的神经基础，人们知之甚少。通过对婴儿和成人使用事件相关电位（ERPs），我们发现，在被动观察中，听觉诱发的大脑反应会随着同时出现的视觉刺激而增强。这些结果与之前的成人神经影像学研究、非人类动物的单细胞记录以及婴儿的行为研究相吻合，为婴儿的多感觉刺激的提升状态提供了证据。此外，这些结果可能为婴儿的视听多感觉处理提供了一个神经标记，可以用来测试信息如何在感觉之间整合以形成对世界的单一感知的发展理论。
