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. 2021 Jun 25;11(7):843.
doi: 10.3390/brainsci11070843.

Neural Basis of Anticipatory Multisensory Integration

Linda Fiorini  1   2 , Marika Berchicci  1   3 , Elena Mussini  1   3 , Valentina Bianco  1   4 , Stefania Lucia  1 , Francesco Di Russo  1   5
Affiliations

Neural Basis of Anticipatory Multisensory Integration

Linda Fiorini et al. Brain Sci. .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: ERP; auditory; multisensory perception; passive perception; sensory preparation; visual.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic representation of the stimuli adopted in the three conditions for the Auditory (A), Visual (V) and Audio-Visual (AV) modalities. In the AV condition, auditory and visual stimuli were presented simultaneously. Two examples of the combination between stimuli in the AV condition are displayed in the Figure.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Pre-stimulus ERP in the A, V and AV conditions at the frontal pool, showing the aP component, and the parieto-occipital pool, showing the vN.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Topographic distribution of the average activity of pre-stimulus ERPs from −500 to 0 ms in the three experimental conditions.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) Simultaneous (AV) and summed (A + V) pre-stimulus ERPs can be observed in the two electrode pools. (b) Statistical map depicting the t-test topographical distribution. Electrode scoring (t < 0.01) is highlighted in white.
Figure 5
Figure 5
(a) AV and A + V post-stimulus ERPs in the frontal and parieto-occipital pools. (b) Topographical distribution of the P1 and the N1 components in the 100–132 ms interval.
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