Department of Psychology, General and Experimental Psychology Unit, LMU Munich, Germany.
Department of Psychology, General and Experimental Psychology Unit, LMU Munich, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2022 Nov 15;262:119549. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119549. Epub 2022 Aug 5.
Many studies have elucidated the multisensory processing of different exteroceptive signals (e.g., auditory-visual stimuli), but less is known about the multisensory integration of interoceptive signals with exteroceptive information. Here, we investigated the perceptual outcomes and electrophysiological brain mechanisms of cardio-visual integration by using participants' electrocardiogram signals to control the color change of a visual target in dynamically changing displays. Reaction times increased when the target change coincided with strong cardiac signals concerning the state of cardiovascular arousal (i.e., presented at the end of ventricular systole), compared to when the target change occurred at a time when cardiac arousal was relatively low (i.e., presented at the end of ventricular diastole). Moreover, the concurrence of the target change and cardiac arousal signals modulated the event-related potentials and the beta power in an early period (100 ms after stimulus onset), and decreased the N2pc and the beta lateralization in a later period (200 ms after stimulus onset). Our results suggest that the multisensory integration of anticipated cardiac signals with a visual target negatively affects its detection among multiple visual stimuli, potentially by suppressing sensory processing and reducing attention toward the visual target. This finding highlights the role of cardiac information in visual processing and furthers our understanding of the brain dynamics underlying multisensory perception involving both interoception and exteroception.
许多研究已经阐明了不同外感受信号（例如听觉-视觉刺激）的多感觉处理，但对于内感受信号与外感受信息的多感觉整合知之甚少。在这里，我们通过使用参与者的心电图信号来控制动态变化的显示器中视觉目标的颜色变化，研究了心脏视觉整合的感知结果和电生理大脑机制。与目标变化发生在心血管唤醒状态相对较低的时间（即心室收缩末期）相比，当目标变化与心血管唤醒的强烈心脏信号（即心室舒张末期）同时发生时，反应时间会增加。此外，目标变化和心脏唤醒信号的同时发生在早期（刺激开始后约 100 毫秒）调节了事件相关电位和β功率，并在后期（刺激开始后约 200 毫秒）降低了 N2pc 和β侧化。我们的研究结果表明，预期的心脏信号与视觉目标的多感觉整合会对其在多个视觉刺激中的检测产生负面影响，可能是通过抑制感觉处理和减少对视觉目标的注意力。这一发现强调了心脏信息在视觉处理中的作用，并进一步加深了我们对内感受和外感受多感觉感知背后的大脑动力学的理解。
