Fisher Victoria L, Dean Cassandra L, Nave Claire S, Parkins Emma V, Kerkhoff Willa G, Kwakye Leslie D
Department of Neuroscience, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, United States.
Yale University School of Medicine and the Connecticut Mental Health Center, New Haven, CT, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2023 Jan 4;16:1027335. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.1027335. eCollection 2022.
We receive information about the world around us from multiple senses which combine in a process known as multisensory integration. Multisensory integration has been shown to be dependent on attention; however, the neural mechanisms underlying this effect are poorly understood. The current study investigates whether changes in sensory noise explain the effect of attention on multisensory integration and whether attentional modulations to multisensory integration occur via modality-specific mechanisms. A task based on the McGurk Illusion was used to measure multisensory integration while attention was manipulated via a concurrent auditory or visual task. Sensory noise was measured within modality based on variability in unisensory performance and was used to predict attentional changes to McGurk perception. Consistent with previous studies, reports of the McGurk illusion decreased when accompanied with a secondary task; however, this effect was stronger for the secondary visual (as opposed to auditory) task. While auditory noise was not influenced by either secondary task, visual noise increased with the addition of the secondary visual task specifically. Interestingly, visual noise accounted for significant variability in attentional disruptions to the McGurk illusion. Overall, these results strongly suggest that sensory noise may underlie attentional alterations to multisensory integration in a modality-specific manner. Future studies are needed to determine whether this finding generalizes to other types of multisensory integration and attentional manipulations. This line of research may inform future studies of attentional alterations to sensory processing in neurological disorders, such as Schizophrenia, Autism, and ADHD.
我们通过多种感官接收关于周围世界的信息，这些感官在一个被称为多感官整合的过程中相互结合。多感官整合已被证明依赖于注意力；然而，这种效应背后的神经机制却鲜为人知。当前的研究调查了感官噪声的变化是否能解释注意力对多感官整合的影响，以及对多感官整合的注意力调节是否通过特定模态机制发生。使用基于麦格克错觉的任务来测量多感官整合，同时通过一个并发的听觉或视觉任务来操纵注意力。基于单感官表现的变异性在模态内测量感官噪声，并用于预测对麦格克感知的注意力变化。与先前的研究一致，当伴有次要任务时，麦格克错觉的报告减少；然而，这种效应在次要视觉（而非听觉）任务中更强。虽然听觉噪声不受任何一个次要任务的影响，但视觉噪声特别是随着次要视觉任务的增加而增加。有趣的是，视觉噪声在对麦格克错觉的注意力干扰中占显著变异性。总体而言，这些结果强烈表明，感官噪声可能以特定模态的方式成为注意力对多感官整合改变的基础。需要进一步的研究来确定这一发现是否适用于其他类型的多感官整合和注意力操纵。这一系列研究可能为未来关于神经疾病（如精神分裂症、自闭症和注意力缺陷多动障碍）中注意力对感觉处理改变的研究提供信息。
