Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27157
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27157.
J Neurosci. 2020 Jan 2;40(1):3-11. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0737-19.2019. Epub 2019 Nov 1.
The operation of our multiple and distinct sensory systems has long captured the interest of researchers from multiple disciplines. When the Society was founded 50 years ago to bring neuroscience research under a common banner, sensory research was largely divided along modality-specific lines. At the time, there were only a few physiological and anatomical observations of the multisensory interactions that powerfully influence our everyday perception. Since then, the neuroscientific study of multisensory integration has increased exponentially in both volume and diversity. From initial studies identifying the overlapping receptive fields of multisensory neurons, to subsequent studies of the spatial and temporal principles that govern the integration of multiple sensory cues, our understanding of this phenomenon at the single-neuron level has expanded to include a variety of dimensions. We now can appreciate how multisensory integration can alter patterns of neural activity in time, and even coordinate activity among populations of neurons across different brain areas. There is now a growing battery of sophisticated empirical and computational techniques that are being used to study this process in a number of models. These advancements have not only enhanced our understanding of this remarkable process in the normal adult brain, but also its underlying circuitry, requirements for development, susceptibility to malfunction, and how its principles may be used to mitigate malfunction.
我们多种不同感觉系统的运作长期以来一直吸引着来自多个学科的研究人员的兴趣。50 年前，为了将神经科学研究纳入一个共同的旗帜下，该学会成立了，当时的感觉研究主要沿着特定模式的路线进行划分。当时，只有少数关于多感觉相互作用的生理学和解剖学观察，这些相互作用有力地影响了我们的日常感知。从那时起，多感觉整合的神经科学研究在数量和多样性上都呈指数级增长。从最初确定多感觉神经元重叠感受野的研究，到随后研究控制多种感觉线索整合的时空原则，我们对这一单一神经元水平现象的理解已经扩展到包括各种维度。我们现在可以理解多感觉整合如何改变神经活动的时间模式，甚至可以协调不同脑区神经元群体的活动。现在有越来越多的复杂的经验和计算技术被用于在多种模型中研究这个过程。这些进展不仅增强了我们对正常成年大脑中这一非凡过程的理解，还增强了对其基础电路、发育要求、易出错性以及如何利用其原理来减轻故障的理解。
