Multidimensionality in Sensomics: Around a Cup of Tea (original) (raw)
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Sensus Communis: Some Perspectives on the Origins of Non-synchronous Cross-Sensory Associations
Frontiers in Psychology, 2019
Adults readily make associations between stimuli perceived consecutively through different sense modalities, such as shapes and sounds. Researchers have only recently begun to investigate such correspondences in infants but only a handful of studies have focused on infants less than a year old. Are infants able to make crosssensory correspondences from birth? Do certain correspondences require extensive real-world experience? Some studies have shown that newborns are able to match stimuli perceived in different sense modalities. Yet, the origins and mechanisms underlying these abilities are unclear. The present paper explores these questions and reviews some hypotheses on the emergence and early development of cross-sensory associations and their possible links with language development. Indeed, if infants can perceive cross-sensory correspondences between events that share certain features but are not strictly contingent or co-located, one may posit that they are using a "sixth sense" in Aristotle's sense of the term. And a likely candidate for explaining this mechanism, as Aristotle suggested, is movement.
Structural Basis of Multisensory Processing
The Neural Bases of Multisensory Processes, 2012
For multisensory processing, the requisite, defining step is the convergence of inputs from different sensory modalities onto individual neurons. This arrangement allows postsynaptic currents evoked by different modalities access to the same membrane, to collide and integrate there on the common ground of an excitable bilayer. Naturally, one would expect a host of biophysical and architectural features to play a role in shaping those postsynaptic events as they spread across the membrane, but much more can be written about what is unknown of the structural basis for multisensory integration than of what is known. Historically, however, what has primarily been the focus of anatomical investigations of multisensory processing has been the identification of sources of inputs that converge in multisensory regions. Although a few recent studies have begun to assess the features of convergence (see below), most of what is known about the structural basis of multisensory processing lies in the sources and pathways essentially before convergence. Multisensory processing is defined as the influence of one sensory modality on activity generated by another modality. However, for most of its history, the term "multisensory" had been synonymous with the term "bimodal" (describing a neuron that can be activated by the independent presentation of stimuli from more than one modality). Hence, studies of multisensory connections first identified areas that were bimodal, either as individual neurons (Horn and Hill 1966) or areal responses to different sensory stimuli (e.g., Toldi et al. 1984). Not surprisingly, the bimodal (and trimodal) areas of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) in monkeys (e.g., Benevento et al. 1977; Bruce et al. 1981; Hikosaka et al. 1988) were readily identified. Among the first comprehensive assessments of multisensory pathways were those that injected tracers into the STS and identified the different cortical sources of inputs to that region. With tracer injections into the upper "polysensory" STS bank, retrogradely labeled neurons were identified in adjoining auditory areas of the STS, superior temporal gyrus, and supratemporal plane, and in visual areas of the inferior parietal lobule and the lateral intraparietal sulcus, with a somewhat more restricted projection from the parahippocampal gyrus and the inferotemporal visual area, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Contributions of Intraindividual and Interindividual Differences to Multisensory Processes
Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 2018
Most evidence on the neural and perceptual correlates of sensory processing derives from studies that have focused on only a single sensory modality and averaged the data from groups of participants. Although valuable, such studies ignore the substantial interindividual and intraindividual differences that are undoubtedly at play. Such variability plays an integral role in both the behavioral/perceptual realms and in the neural correlates of these processes, but substantially less is known when compared with group-averaged data. Recently, it has been shown that the presentation of stimuli from two or more sensory modalities (i.e., multisensory stimulation) not only results in the well-established performance gains but also gives rise to reductions in behavioral and neural response variability. To better understand the relationship between neural and behavioral response variability under multisensory conditions, this study investigated both behavior and brain activity in a task requi...
Introduction to the Special Issue on Individual Differences in Multisensory Perception: an Overview
The world is full of objects that can be perceived through multiple different senses to create an integrated understanding of our environment. Since each of us has different biological and psychological characteristics, different people may perceive the world in quite different ways. However, the questions of how and why our multisensory perceptions differ have not been explored in any great depth. This special issue, arising from a series of British Psychological Society-funded seminars, presents new research and opinions on the impacts of a variety of individual differences on multisensory perception. We hope that readers will enjoy this collection of eight papers on individual differences in multisensory perception arising from developmental changes, autism, Down syndrome, migraine, sensory loss and substitution, and personality.
Physics of Life Reviews, 2019
Brain activity takes place in three spatial-plus time dimensions. This rather obvious claim has been questioned by novel papers that, taking into account the big data outburst and the recently introduced computational tools, are starting to unveil a more intricate state of affairs. Indeed, various brain activities and their correlated mental functions can be assessed in terms of trajectories embedded in phase spaces of dimensions higher than the canonical ones. In this review, I show how further dimensions may not just represent a convenient methodological tool that allows a better mathematical treatment of otherwise elusive cortical activities, but may also reflect genuine functional or anatomical relationships among real nervous functions. I then describe how to extract hidden multidimensional information from real or artificial neurodata series, and demonstrate how our mind dilutes, rather than concentrates as currently believed, the inputs coming from the environment. Finally, I argue that the principle "the higher the dimension, the greater the information" may explain the occurrence of mental activities and elucidate the mechanisms of human diseases associated with dimensionality reduction.
Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision, 2014
Distinct neural populations carry signals from short-wave (S) cones. We used individual differences to test whether two types of pathways, those that receive excitatory input (S) and those that receive inhibitory input (S−), contribute independently to psychophysical performance. We also conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to look for genetic correlates of the individual differences. Our psychophysical test was based on the Cambridge Color Test, but detection thresholds were measured separately for S-cone spatial increments and decrements. Our participants were 1060 healthy adults aged 16-40. Test-retest reliabilities for thresholds were good (ρ 0.64 for S-cone increments, 0.67 for decrements and 0.73 for the average of the two). "Regression scores," isolating variability unique to incremental or decremental sensitivity, were also reliable (ρ 0.53 for increments and ρ 0.51 for decrements). The correlation between incremental and decremental thresholds was ρ 0.65. No genetic markers reached genome-wide significance (p<5 × 10 −7 ). We identified 18 "suggestive" loci (p < 10 −5 ). The significant test-retest reliabilities show stable individual differences in S-cone sensitivity in a normal adult population. Though a portion of the variance in sensitivity is shared between incremental and decremental sensitivity, over 26% of the variance is stable across individuals, but unique to increments or decrements, suggesting distinct neural substrates. Some of the variability in sensitivity is likely to be genetic. We note that four of the suggestive associations found in the GWAS are with genes that are involved in glucose metabolism or have been associated with diabetes.