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Smyre SA, Bean NL, Stein BE, Rowland BA. The brain can develop conflicting multisensory principles to guide behavior. Cereb Cortex 2024; 34:bhae247. [PMID: 38879756 PMCID: PMC11179994 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae247] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/16/2024] [Revised: 05/23/2024] [Accepted: 05/30/2024] [Indexed: 06/19/2024] Open
Abstract
Midbrain multisensory neurons undergo a significant postnatal transition in how they process cross-modal (e.g. visual-auditory) signals. In early stages, signals derived from common events are processed competitively; however, at later stages they are processed cooperatively such that their salience is enhanced. This transition reflects adaptation to cross-modal configurations that are consistently experienced and become informative about which correspond to common events. Tested here was the assumption that overt behaviors follow a similar maturation. Cats were reared in omnidirectional sound thereby compromising the experience needed for this developmental process. Animals were then repeatedly exposed to different configurations of visual and auditory stimuli (e.g. spatiotemporally congruent or spatially disparate) that varied on each side of space and their behavior was assessed using a detection/localization task. Animals showed enhanced performance to stimuli consistent with the experience provided: congruent stimuli elicited enhanced behaviors where spatially congruent cross-modal experience was provided, and spatially disparate stimuli elicited enhanced behaviors where spatially disparate cross-modal experience was provided. Cross-modal configurations not consistent with experience did not enhance responses. The presumptive benefit of such flexibility in the multisensory developmental process is to sensitize neural circuits (and the behaviors they control) to the features of the environment in which they will function. These experiments reveal that these processes have a high degree of flexibility, such that two (conflicting) multisensory principles can be implemented by cross-modal experience on opposite sides of space even within the same animal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Scott A Smyre
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States
| | - Naomi L Bean
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States
| | - Barry E Stein
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States
| | - Benjamin A Rowland
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States
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Bean NL, Stein BE, Rowland BA. Cross-modal exposure restores multisensory enhancement after hemianopia. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:11036-11046. [PMID: 37724427 PMCID: PMC10646694 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad343] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/06/2023] [Revised: 08/28/2023] [Accepted: 08/30/2023] [Indexed: 09/20/2023] Open
Abstract
Hemianopia is a common consequence of unilateral damage to visual cortex that manifests as a profound blindness in contralesional space. A noninvasive cross-modal (visual-auditory) exposure paradigm has been developed in an animal model to ameliorate this disorder. Repeated stimulation of a visual-auditory stimulus restores overt responses to visual stimuli in the blinded hemifield. It is believed to accomplish this by enhancing the visual sensitivity of circuits remaining after a lesion of visual cortex; in particular, circuits involving the multisensory neurons of the superior colliculus. Neurons in this midbrain structure are known to integrate spatiotemporally congruent visual and auditory signals to amplify their responses, which, in turn, enhances behavioral performance. Here we evaluated the relationship between the rehabilitation of hemianopia and this process of multisensory integration. Induction of hemianopia also eliminated multisensory enhancement in the blinded hemifield. Both vision and multisensory enhancement rapidly recovered with the rehabilitative cross-modal exposures. However, although both reached pre-lesion levels at similar rates, they did so with different spatial patterns. The results suggest that the capability for multisensory integration and enhancement is not a pre-requisite for visual recovery in hemianopia, and that the underlying mechanisms for recovery may be more complex than currently appreciated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Naomi L Bean
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, United States
| | - Barry E Stein
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, United States
| | - Benjamin A Rowland
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, United States
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Feenders G. Attentional capture or multisensory integration? (Commentary on Bean et al., 2021). Eur J Neurosci 2023; 58:3714-3718. [PMID: 37697730 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.16131] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/03/2021] [Accepted: 08/10/2023] [Indexed: 09/13/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Gesa Feenders
- Animal Physiology and Behaviour Group, Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all, Department of Neuroscience, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany
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Choi I, Demir I, Oh S, Lee SH. Multisensory integration in the mammalian brain: diversity and flexibility in health and disease. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2023; 378:20220338. [PMID: 37545309 PMCID: PMC10404930 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0338] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/03/2023] [Accepted: 04/30/2023] [Indexed: 08/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Multisensory integration (MSI) occurs in a variety of brain areas, spanning cortical and subcortical regions. In traditional studies on sensory processing, the sensory cortices have been considered for processing sensory information in a modality-specific manner. The sensory cortices, however, send the information to other cortical and subcortical areas, including the higher association cortices and the other sensory cortices, where the multiple modality inputs converge and integrate to generate a meaningful percept. This integration process is neither simple nor fixed because these brain areas interact with each other via complicated circuits, which can be modulated by numerous internal and external conditions. As a result, dynamic MSI makes multisensory decisions flexible and adaptive in behaving animals. Impairments in MSI occur in many psychiatric disorders, which may result in an altered perception of the multisensory stimuli and an abnormal reaction to them. This review discusses the diversity and flexibility of MSI in mammals, including humans, primates and rodents, as well as the brain areas involved. It further explains how such flexibility influences perceptual experiences in behaving animals in both health and disease. This article is part of the theme issue 'Decision and control processes in multisensory perception'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ilsong Choi
- Center for Synaptic Brain Dysfunctions, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea
| | - Ilayda Demir
- Department of biological sciences, KAIST, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea
| | - Seungmi Oh
- Department of biological sciences, KAIST, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea
| | - Seung-Hee Lee
- Center for Synaptic Brain Dysfunctions, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea
- Department of biological sciences, KAIST, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea
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Hoffmann AH, Crevecoeur F. Task Instructions and the Need for Feedback Correction Influence the Contribution of Visual Errors to Reach Adaptation. eNeuro 2023; 10:ENEURO.0068-23.2023. [PMID: 37596049 PMCID: PMC10481641 DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0068-23.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2023] [Revised: 08/04/2023] [Accepted: 08/04/2023] [Indexed: 08/20/2023] Open
Abstract
Previous research has questioned whether motor adaptation is shaped by an optimal combination of multisensory error signals. Here, we expanded on this work by investigating how the use of visual and somatosensory error signals during online correction influences single-trial adaptation. To this end, we exposed participants to a random sequence of force-field perturbations and recorded their corrective responses as well as the after-effects exhibited during the subsequent unperturbed movement. In addition to the force perturbation, we artificially decreased or increased visual errors by multiplying hand deviations by a gain smaller or larger than one. Corrective responses to the force perturbation clearly scaled with the size of the visual error, but this scaling did not transfer one-to-one to motor adaptation and we observed no consistent interaction between limb and visual errors on adaptation. However, reducing visual errors during perturbation led to a small reduction of after-effects and this residual influence of visual feedback was eliminated when we instructed participants to control their hidden hand instead of the visual hand cursor. Taken together, our results demonstrate that task instructions and the need to correct for errors during perturbation are important factors to consider if we want to understand how the sensorimotor system uses and combines multimodal error signals to adapt movements.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anne H Hoffmann
- Institute for Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics (ICTEAM), Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve 1348, Belgium
- Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS), Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels 1200, Belgium
| | - Frédéric Crevecoeur
- Institute for Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics (ICTEAM), Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve 1348, Belgium
- Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS), Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels 1200, Belgium
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Bean NL, Smyre SA, Stein BE, Rowland BA. Noise-rearing precludes the behavioral benefits of multisensory integration. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:948-958. [PMID: 35332919 PMCID: PMC9930622 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac113] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/03/2021] [Revised: 02/23/2022] [Accepted: 02/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Concordant visual-auditory stimuli enhance the responses of individual superior colliculus (SC) neurons. This neuronal capacity for "multisensory integration" is not innate: it is acquired only after substantial cross-modal (e.g. auditory-visual) experience. Masking transient auditory cues by raising animals in omnidirectional sound ("noise-rearing") precludes their ability to obtain this experience and the ability of the SC to construct a normal multisensory (auditory-visual) transform. SC responses to combinations of concordant visual-auditory stimuli are depressed, rather than enhanced. The present experiments examined the behavioral consequence of this rearing condition in a simple detection/localization task. In the first experiment, the auditory component of the concordant cross-modal pair was novel, and only the visual stimulus was a target. In the second experiment, both component stimuli were targets. Noise-reared animals failed to show multisensory performance benefits in either experiment. These results reveal a close parallel between behavior and single neuron physiology in the multisensory deficits that are induced when noise disrupts early visual-auditory experience.
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Affiliation(s)
- Naomi L Bean
- Corresponding author: Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States.
| | | | - Barry E Stein
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States
| | - Benjamin A Rowland
- Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States
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James LS, Baier AL, Page RA, Clements P, Hunter KL, Taylor RC, Ryan MJ. Cross-modal facilitation of auditory discrimination in a frog. Biol Lett 2022; 18:20220098. [PMID: 35765810 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2022.0098] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Stimulation in one sensory modality can affect perception in a separate modality, resulting in diverse effects including illusions in humans. This can also result in cross-modal facilitation, a process where sensory performance in one modality is improved by stimulation in another modality. For instance, a simple sound can improve performance in a visual task in both humans and cats. However, the range of contexts and underlying mechanisms that evoke such facilitation effects remain poorly understood. Here, we demonstrated cross-modal stimulation in wild-caught túngara frogs, a species with well-studied acoustic preferences in females. We first identified that a combined visual and seismic cue (vocal sac movement and water ripple) was behaviourally relevant for females choosing between two courtship calls in a phonotaxis assay. We then found that this combined cross-modal stimulus rescued a species-typical acoustic preference in the presence of background noise that otherwise abolished the preference. These results highlight how cross-modal stimulation can prime attention in receivers to improve performance during decision-making. With this, we provide the foundation for future work uncovering the processes and conditions that promote cross-modal facilitation effects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Logan S James
- Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA.,Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama
| | - A Leonie Baier
- Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA.,Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama
| | - Rachel A Page
- Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama
| | - Paul Clements
- Henson School of Technology, Salisbury University, 1101 Camden Ave, Salisbury, MD 21801, USA
| | - Kimberly L Hunter
- Department of Biological Sciences, Salisbury University, 1101 Camden Ave, Salisbury, MD 21801, USA
| | - Ryan C Taylor
- Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama.,Department of Biological Sciences, Salisbury University, 1101 Camden Ave, Salisbury, MD 21801, USA
| | - Michael J Ryan
- Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA.,Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama
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