Neural Basis of Anticipatory Multisensory Integration. 2021

Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", 00135 Rome, Italy.

The brain is able to gather different sensory information to enhance salient event perception, thus yielding a unified perceptual experience of multisensory events. Multisensory integration has been widely studied, and the literature supports the hypothesis that it can occur across various stages of stimulus processing, including both bottom-up and top-down control. However, evidence on anticipatory multisensory integration occurring in the fore period preceding the presentation of the expected stimulus in passive tasks, is missing. By means of event-related potentials (ERPs), it has been recently proposed that visual and auditory unimodal stimulations are preceded by sensory-specific readiness activities. Accordingly, in the present study, we tested the occurrence of multisensory integration in the endogenous anticipatory phase of sensory processing, combining visual and auditory stimuli during unimodal and multimodal passive ERP paradigms. Results showed that the modality-specific pre-stimulus ERP components (i.e., the auditory positivity -aP- and the visual negativity -vN-) started earlier and were larger in the multimodal stimulation compared with the sum of the ERPs elicited by the unimodal stimulations. The same amplitude effect was also present for the early auditory N1 and visual P1 components. This anticipatory multisensory effect seems to influence stimulus processing, boosting the magnitude of early stimulus processing. This paves the way for new perspectives on the neural basis of multisensory integration.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries

Related Publications

Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
July 2009, Journal of neurophysiology,
Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
February 2023, Brain structure & function,
Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
December 2009, Hearing research,
Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
January 2013, NeuroImage,
Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
January 2014, PloS one,
Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
January 2006, Conference proceedings : ... Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual Conference,
Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
November 2009, The European journal of neuroscience,
Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
January 2016, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience,
Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
August 2017, BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology,
Linda Fiorini, and Marika Berchicci, and Elena Mussini, and Valentina Bianco, and Stefania Lucia, and Francesco Di Russo
January 2018, Nature reviews. Nephrology,
Copied contents to your clipboard!