Multisensory interactions between vestibular, visual and somatosensory signals
Vestibular inputs are constantly processed and integrated with signals from other sensory modalities, such as vision and touch. The multiply-connected nature of vestibular cortical anatomy led us to investigate whether vestibular signals could participate in a multi-way interaction with visual and s...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article (Journal) |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
April 13, 2015
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| In: |
PLOS ONE
Year: 2015, Volume: 10, Issue: 4 |
| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0124573 |
| Online Access: | Verlag, kostenfrei, Volltext: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0124573 Verlag, kostenfrei, Volltext: http://journals.plos.org.ezproxy.medma.uni-heidelberg.de/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124573 
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| Author Notes: | Elisa Raffaella Ferrè, Leif Erik Walther, Patrick Haggard |
| Summary: | Vestibular inputs are constantly processed and integrated with signals from other sensory modalities, such as vision and touch. The multiply-connected nature of vestibular cortical anatomy led us to investigate whether vestibular signals could participate in a multi-way interaction with visual and somatosensory perception. We used signal detection methods to identify whether vestibular stimulation might interact with both visual and somatosensory events in a detection task. Participants were instructed to detect near-threshold somatosensory stimuli that were delivered to the left index finger in one half of experimental trials. A visual signal occurred close to the finger in half of the trials, independent of somatosensory stimuli. A novel Near infrared caloric vestibular stimulus (NirCVS) was used to artificially activate the vestibular organs. Sham stimulations were used to control for non-specific effects of NirCVS. We found that both visual and vestibular events increased somatosensory sensitivity. Critically, we found no evidence for supra-additive multisensory enhancement when both visual and vestibular signals were administered together: in fact, we found a trend towards sub-additive interaction. The results are compatible with a vestibular role in somatosensory gain regulation. |
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| Item Description: | Gesehen am 17.05.2017 |
| Physical Description: | Online Resource |
| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0124573 |