Trends in Cognitive Sciences
ReviewThe multifaceted interplay between attention and multisensory integration
Section snippets
Bidirectional influences between multisensory integration and attention
Our brains are continuously inundated with stimulation arriving through our various sensory pathways. The processes involved in synthesizing and organizing this multisensory deluge of inputs are fundamental to effective perception and cognitive functioning. Although the combination of information across the senses has been investigated since psychology became an experimental discipline [1], the past decade has seen a sharp increase of interest in this question. Within this context, the issue of
A framework for interactions between attention and multisensory integration
As noted above, and as reviewed in the sections to follow, the evidence in favor of the existence of bidirectional influences between attention and multisensory integration is considerable. Under certain circumstances the co-occurrence of stimuli in different modalities can lead preattentively and automatically to multisensory integration in a bottom-up fashion, which then makes it more probable that the resulting event will capture attention and thus capitalize available processing resources
Stimulus-driven influences of multisensory integration on attention
A clear demonstration of the possible involvement of stimulus-driven multisensory integration on attentional selection was recently provided using a difficult visual search task [24]. In this study visual targets were presented among an array of similar distractor stimuli (Figure 2). Search times for the visual target increased with an increasing number of display items (distractors), as has typically been found in demanding unisensory visual search tasks 47, 48. In these displays, targets and
Influence of top-down directed attention on multisensory processing
As mentioned earlier, recent studies have provided evidence for the influence of top-down attention on multisensory integration processes. In a recent EEG study, for example, it was shown that spatial attention can strongly influence multiple stages of multisensory processing, beginning as early as 80 ms post-stimulus [40]. Complementarily, a recent fMRI study [39] showed increased activity in multiple brain areas, including the superior temporal sulcus, striate visual cortex, extrastriate
Crossmodal spreading of attention
Another way that attention can interactively influence the processing of stimulus inputs in different sensory modalities that do occur at the same time has been termed crossmodal spreading of attention, which has been found to occur even when the visual and auditory stimuli arise from different spatial locations [37]. More specifically, it has been shown that a task-irrelevant, centrally presented, auditory stimulus can elicit a different brain response when paired in time with an attended
Concluding remarks and future directions
Although it is generally acknowledged that multisensory integration processes can influence the bottom-up orienting of attention to salient stimuli [23], the role of top-down attention and the interplay between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms during multisensory integration processes remains a matter of ongoing debate. On the one hand, there is relatively little effect of top-down attention on multisensory integration under conditions of low competition between stimuli [33]. On the other
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Erik van der Burg, Scott Fairhall and Emiliano Macaluso for providing figure material for this paper, and Sarah Donohue and Matthijs Noordzij for helpful comments on an earlier version. The effort for this work was supported by funding from the Institute for Behavioral Research at the University of Twente to D.T., by a grant from the German Research Foundation (SE 1859/1-1) to D.S., by grants from the MICINN (PSI2010-15426 - CDS2007-00012) and DIUE (SRG2009-092) to S.S.-F., and
Glossary
- Attentional orienting
- Attention involves mechanisms whereby processing resources are preferentially allocated toward particular locations, features or objects. Attentional orienting refers to the process responsible for moving the focus of attention from one location, feature or object, to another. Orienting can occur covertly, that is, in the absence of movements of the eyes or other sensory receptor surfaces (e.g. ears), as well as overtly, where the shift is accompanied by a reorienting of
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