Malzacher Annalenia, Hilbig Tobias, Pecka Michael, Ferreiro Dardo N
Division of Neurobiology, Faculty of Biology, LMU Biocenter, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany.
TUM School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany.
Front Neurosci. 2025 Mar 19;19:1535759. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1535759. eCollection 2025.
Perception in natural environments requires integrating multisensory inputs while navigating our surroundings. During locomotion, sensory cues such as vision and audition change coherently, providing crucial environmental information. This integration may affect perceptual thresholds due to sensory interference. Vision often dominates in multimodal contexts, overshadowing auditory information and potentially degrading audition. While traditional laboratory experiments offer controlled insights into sensory integration, they often fail to replicate the dynamic, multisensory interactions of real-world behavior. We used a naturalistic paradigm in which participants navigate an arena searching for a target guided by position-dependent auditory cues. Previous findings showed that frequency discrimination thresholds during self-motion matched those in stationary paradigms, even though participants often relied on visually dominated navigation instead of auditory feedback. This suggested that vision might affect auditory perceptual thresholds in naturalistic settings. Here, we manipulated visual input to examine its effect on frequency discrimination and search strategy selection. By degrading visual input, we nudged participants' attention toward audition, leveraging subtle sensory adjustments to promote adaptive use of auditory cues without restricting their freedom of choice. Thus, this approach explores how attentional shifts influence multisensory integration during self-motion. Our results show that frequency discrimination thresholds improved by restricting visual input, suggesting that reducing visual interference can increase auditory sensitivity. This is consistent with adaptive behavioral theories, suggesting that individuals can dynamically adjust their perceptual strategies to leverage the most reliable sensory inputs. These findings contribute to a better understanding of multisensory integration, highlighting the flexibility of sensory systems in complex environments.
在自然环境中的感知需要在探索周围环境时整合多感官输入。在移动过程中，视觉和听觉等感官线索会连贯地变化，提供关键的环境信息。由于感官干扰，这种整合可能会影响感知阈值。在多模态情境中，视觉往往占主导地位，掩盖听觉信息并可能使听觉退化。虽然传统的实验室实验能提供有关感官整合的可控见解，但它们往往无法复制现实世界行为中动态的多感官交互。我们采用了一种自然主义范式，让参与者在一个场地中导航，根据位置相关的听觉线索寻找目标。先前的研究结果表明，自我移动过程中的频率辨别阈值与静止范式中的阈值相当，尽管参与者通常依赖视觉主导的导航而非听觉反馈。这表明在自然主义环境中，视觉可能会影响听觉感知阈值。在此，我们操纵视觉输入以检查其对频率辨别和搜索策略选择的影响。通过降低视觉输入质量，我们将参与者的注意力转向听觉，利用微妙的感官调整来促进对听觉线索的适应性使用，同时不限制他们的选择自由。因此，这种方法探索了注意力转移如何在自我移动过程中影响多感官整合。我们的结果表明，通过限制视觉输入，频率辨别阈值得到了改善，这表明减少视觉干扰可以提高听觉灵敏度。这与适应性行为理论一致，表明个体可以动态调整其感知策略，以利用最可靠的感官输入。这些发现有助于更好地理解多感官整合，突出了感官系统在复杂环境中的灵活性。
