Audio-visual synchrony and feature-selective attention co-amplify early visual processing
Audio-visual synchrony and feature-selective attention co-amplify early visual processing
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DOI：
10.1007/s00221-015-4392-8
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发表时间：
2016-05-01
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Mueller, Matthias M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Keitel, Christian;Mueller, Matthias M.
我们的大脑依赖于选择性注意和会聚感觉处理的神经机制，以有效地科普丰富和不断的多感觉输入。一个突出的假设认为，视听同步可以作为一个强大的吸引空间注意力。在这里，我们测试了视听同步对特征选择性注意力的类似影响。我们提出了两个重叠的Gabor补丁，不同的颜色和方向。在每次试验中，参与者都被提示选择性地注意两个补丁中的一个。随着时间的推移，这两个补丁的空间频率以不同的速率（3.14和3.63赫兹）正弦变化，引起脉冲状感知。同时呈现的纯音以两种视觉刺激之一的脉冲速率进行频率调制，以引入视听同步。脉冲刺激引起不同的时间锁定振荡电生理脑反应。这些稳态响应进行了量化的频谱域中，以检查个人的刺激处理的条件下，同步与异步的音调呈现，当相应的刺激与无人值守。我们发现，这两个，参加颜色的刺激和它的同步与音调，加强其处理。此外，这两种增益效应线性组合出席同步刺激。我们的研究结果表明，视听同步可以吸引注意特定的刺激功能时，刺激在空间上重叠。
Our brain relies on neural mechanisms of selective attention and converging sensory processing to efficiently cope with rich and unceasing multisensory inputs. One prominent assumption holds that audio-visual synchrony can act as a strong attractor for spatial attention. Here, we tested for a similar effect of audio-visual synchrony on feature-selective attention. We presented two superimposed Gabor patches that differed in colour and orientation. On each trial, participants were cued to selectively attend to one of the two patches. Over time, spatial frequencies of both patches varied sinusoidally at distinct rates (3.14 and 3.63 Hz), giving rise to pulse-like percepts. A simultaneously presented pure tone carried a frequency modulation at the pulse rate of one of the two visual stimuli to introduce audio-visual synchrony. Pulsed stimulation elicited distinct time-locked oscillatory electrophysiological brain responses. These steady-state responses were quantified in the spectral domain to examine individual stimulus processing under conditions of synchronous versus asynchronous tone presentation and when respective stimuli were attended versus unattended. We found that both, attending to the colour of a stimulus and its synchrony with the tone, enhanced its processing. Moreover, both gain effects combined linearly for attended in-sync stimuli. Our results suggest that audio-visual synchrony can attract attention to specific stimulus features when stimuli overlap in space.