BACKGROUND & AIMS:
:Merging information derived from different sensory channels allows the brain to amplify minimal signals to reduce their ambiguity, thereby improving the ability of orienting to, detecting, and identifying environmental events. Although multisensory interactions have been mostly ascribed to the activity of higher-order heteromodal areas, multisensory convergence may arise even in primary sensory-specific areas located very early along the cortical processing stream. In three experiments, we investigated early multisensory interactions in lower-level visual areas, by using a novel approach, based on the coupling of behavioral stimulation with two noninvasive brain stimulation techniques, namely, TMS and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). First, we showed that redundant multisensory stimuli can increase visual cortical excitability, as measured by means of phosphene induction by occipital TMS; such physiological enhancement is followed by a behavioral facilitation through the amplification of signal intensity in sensory-specific visual areas. The more sensory inputs are combined (i.e., trimodal vs. bimodal stimuli), the greater are the benefits on phosphene perception. Second, neuroelectrical activity changes induced by tDCS in the temporal and in the parietal cortices, but not in the occipital cortex, can further boost the multisensory enhancement of visual cortical excitability, by increasing the auditory and tactile inputs from temporal and parietal regions, respectively, to lower-level visual areas.
背景与目标:
: 合并来自不同感觉通道的信息可以使大脑放大最小的信号以减少其模糊性,从而提高定向,检测和识别环境事件的能力。尽管多感觉相互作用主要归因于高阶异态区域的活动,但即使在皮质加工流早期的主要感觉特定区域,也可能出现多感觉会聚。在三个实验中,我们使用一种新颖的方法,基于行为刺激与两种非侵入性脑刺激技术 (TMS和经颅直流刺激 (tDCS)) 的耦合,研究了较低水平视觉区域中的早期多感觉相互作用。首先,我们证明了冗余的多感觉刺激可以增加视觉皮层兴奋性,这是通过枕骨TMS的phosphene诱导来测量的; 这种生理增强之后是通过在感觉特定的视觉区域中放大信号强度来促进行为。结合的感觉输入越多 (即三峰刺激与双峰刺激),对phosphene感知的好处就越大。其次,tDCS在颞叶和顶叶皮层 (而在枕叶皮层中没有) 引起的神经电活动变化可以通过增加来自颞叶和顶叶区域的听觉和触觉输入来进一步增强视觉皮层兴奋性,分别到较低水平的视觉区域。