Visual, auditory and tactile stimuli compete for early sensory processing capacities within but not between senses
Visual, auditory and tactile stimuli compete for early sensory processing capacities within but not between senses
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DOI：
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.04.024
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发表时间：
2014-08
期刊：
影响因子：
5.7
通讯作者：
Emanuele Porcu;C. Keitel;Matthias M. Müller
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Emanuele Porcu;C. Keitel;Matthias M. Müller
我们调查了无人看管的视觉，听觉和触觉刺激是否竞争能力有限的早期感觉处理的感官。在三个实验中，我们探讨了竞争性视听，视觉触觉和听觉触觉刺激的相互作用。为此，连续的视觉，听觉和触觉刺激流（“参考”刺激）的频率标记，以引起稳态反应（SSR）。这些电生理振荡脑反应索引正在进行的刺激处理相应的感觉。为了诱导竞争，我们在参考呈现期间在相同和/或不同的感官（“竞争者”）中引入瞬态频率标记的刺激。受试者在中央注视点进行单独的视觉辨别任务，以控制感觉加工的注意偏差。竞争对手存在和竞争对手缺席期间之间的参考驱动SSR振幅的比较显示，当竞争对手以与参考相同的感觉方式出现时，振幅降低。降低幅度表明竞争对手的抑制影响参考刺激处理。至关重要的是，当竞争对手以不同于参考模式的方式呈现时，没有发现这种抑制。这些结果有力地表明，早期的感官竞争是专门的模态特定的，并没有跨感官延伸。我们讨论了这些研究结果的后果建模的神经机制的联运注意。
We investigated whether unattended visual, auditory and tactile stimuli compete for capacity-limited early sensory processing across senses. In three experiments, we probed competitive audio-visual, visuo-tactile and audio-tactile stimulus interactions. To this end, continuous visual, auditory and tactile stimulus streams (‘reference’ stimuli) were frequency-tagged to elicit steady-state responses (SSRs). These electrophysiological oscillatory brain responses indexed ongoing stimulus processing in corresponding senses. To induce competition, we introduced transient frequency-tagged stimuli in same and/or different senses (‘competitors’) during reference presentation. Participants performed a separate visual discrimination task at central fixation to control for attentional biases of sensory processing. A comparison of reference-driven SSR amplitudes between competitor-present and competitor-absent periods revealed reduced amplitudes when a competitor was presented in the same sensory modality as the reference. Reduced amplitudes indicated the competitor's suppressive influence on reference stimulus processing. Crucially, no such suppression was found when a competitor was presented in a different than the reference modality. These results strongly suggest that early sensory competition is exclusively modality-specific and does not extend across senses. We discuss consequences of these findings for modeling the neural mechanisms underlying intermodal attention.