Institute of Medical Psychology, Goethe-University, Heinrich-Hoffmann-Strasse 10, D-60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2012 Jan 2;59(1):547-55. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.07.041. Epub 2011 Jul 30.
Human neuroplasticity of multisensory integration has been studied mainly in the context of natural or artificial training situations in healthy subjects. However, regular smokers also offer the opportunity to assess the impact of intensive daily multisensory interactions with smoking-related objects on the neural correlates of crossmodal object processing. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study revealed that smokers show a comparable visuo-haptic integration pattern for both smoking paraphernalia and control objects in the left lateral occipital complex, a region playing a crucial role in crossmodal object recognition. Moreover, the degree of nicotine dependence correlated positively with the magnitude of visuo-haptic integration in the left lateral occipital complex (LOC) for smoking-associated but not for control objects. In contrast, in the left LOC non-smokers displayed a visuo-haptic integration pattern for control objects, but not for smoking paraphernalia. This suggests that prolonged smoking-related multisensory experiences in smokers facilitate the merging of visual and haptic inputs in the lateral occipital complex for the respective stimuli. Studying clinical populations who engage in compulsive activities may represent an ecologically valid approach to investigating the neuroplasticity of multisensory integration.
人类多感官整合的神经可塑性主要在健康受试者的自然或人为训练情境中进行研究。然而，经常吸烟的人也提供了机会来评估与吸烟相关物体的密集日常多感官相互作用对跨模态对象处理的神经相关性的影响。本功能磁共振成像研究表明，吸烟者在左侧外侧枕叶复合体中表现出与吸烟用具和对照物体相似的视触觉整合模式，该区域在跨模态对象识别中起着至关重要的作用。此外，尼古丁依赖程度与左侧外侧枕叶复合体（LOC）中与吸烟相关物体的视触觉整合程度呈正相关，但与对照物体无关。相比之下，在左侧 LOC，非吸烟者对对照物体表现出视触觉整合模式，但对吸烟用具没有。这表明，吸烟者长期的与吸烟相关的多感官体验促进了对相应刺激的外侧枕叶复合体中视觉和触觉输入的融合。研究从事强迫性活动的临床人群可能是研究多感官整合神经可塑性的一种具有生态效度的方法。
