Sensory dominance and multisensory integration as screening tools in aging.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Murray MM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5995929 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Multisensory integration (MSI) is the integration by the brain of environmental information acquired through more than one sense. Accurate MSI has been shown to be a key component of successful aging and to be crucial for processes underlying activities of daily living (ADLs). Problems in MSI could prevent older adults (OA) to age in place and live independently. However, there is a need to know how to assess changes in MSI in individuals. This systematic review provides an overview of tests assessing the effect of age on MSI in the healthy elderly population (aged 60 years and older). A literature search was done in Scopus. Articles from the earliest records available to January 20, 2016, were eligible for inclusion if assessing effects of aging on MSI in the healthy elderly population compared to younger adults (YA). These articles were rated for risk of bias with the Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment. Out of 307 identified research articles, 49 articles were included for final review, describing 69 tests. The review indicated that OA maximize the use of multiple sources of information in comparison to YA (20 studies). In tasks that require more cognitive function, or when participants need to adapt rapidly to a situation, or when a dual task is added to the experiment, OA have problems selecting and integrating information properly as compared to YA (19 studies). Additionally, irrelevant or wrong information (i.e., distractors) has a greater impact on OA than on YA (21 studies). OA failing to weigh sensory information properly, has not been described in previous reviews. Anatomical changes (i.e., reduction of brain volume and differences of brain areas' recruitment) and information processing changes (i.e., general cognitive slowing, inverse effectiveness, larger time window of integration, deficits in attentional control and increased noise at baseline) can only partly explain the differences between OA and YA regarding MSI. Since we have an interest in successful aging and early detection of MSI issues in the elderly population, the identified tests form a good starting point to develop a clinically useful toolkit to assess MSI in healthy OA.
| S-EPMC5368230 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Daily our central nervous system receives inputs via several sensory modalities, processes them and integrates information in order to produce a suitable behavior. The amazing part is that such a multisensory integration brings all information into a unified percept. An approach to start investigating this property is to show that perception is better and faster when multimodal stimuli are used as compared to unimodal stimuli. This forms the first part of the present study conducted in a non-human primate's model (n?=?2) engaged in a detection sensory-motor task where visual and auditory stimuli were displayed individually or simultaneously. The measured parameters were the reaction time (RT) between stimulus and onset of arm movement, successes and errors percentages, as well as the evolution as a function of time of these parameters with training. As expected, RTs were shorter when the subjects were exposed to combined stimuli. The gains for both subjects were around 20 and 40?ms, as compared with the auditory and visual stimulus alone, respectively. Moreover the number of correct responses increased in response to bimodal stimuli. We interpreted such multisensory advantage through redundant signal effect which decreases perceptual ambiguity, increases speed of stimulus detection, and improves performance accuracy. The second part of the study presents single-unit recordings derived from the premotor cortex (PM) of the same subjects during the sensory-motor task. Response patterns to sensory/multisensory stimulation are documented and specific type proportions are reported. Characterization of bimodal neurons indicates a mechanism of audio-visual integration possibly through a decrease of inhibition. Nevertheless the neural processing leading to faster motor response from PM as a polysensory association cortical area remains still unclear.
| S-EPMC3837444 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background: There exists a cohort of children and adults who exhibit an inordinately high degree of discomfort when experiencing what would be considered moderate and manageable levels of sensory input. That is, they show over-responsivity in the face of entirely typical sound, light, touch, taste, or smell inputs, and this occurs to such an extent that it interferes with their daily functioning and reaches clinical levels of dysfunction. What marks these individuals apart is that this sensory processing disorder (SPD) is observed in the absence of other symptom clusters that would result in a diagnosis of Autism, ADHD, or other neurodevelopmental disorders more typically associated with sensory processing difficulties. One major theory forwarded to account for these SPDs posits a deficit in multisensory integration, such that the various sensory inputs are not appropriately integrated into the central nervous system, leading to an overwhelming sensory-perceptual environment, and in turn to the sensory-defensive phenotype observed in these individuals. Methods: We tested whether children (6-16 years) with an over-responsive SPD phenotype (N = 12) integrated multisensory speech differently from age-matched typically-developing controls (TD: N = 12). Participants identified monosyllabic words while background noise level and sensory modality (auditory-alone, visual-alone, audiovisual) were varied in pseudorandom order. Improved word identification when speech was both seen and heard compared to when it was simply heard served to index multisensory speech integration. Results: School-aged children with an SPD show a deficit in the ability to benefit from the combination of both seen and heard speech inputs under noisy environmental conditions, suggesting that these children do not benefit from multisensory integrative processing to the same extent as their typically developing peers. In contrast, auditory-alone performance did not differ between the groups, signifying that this multisensory deficit is not simply due to impaired processing of auditory speech. Conclusions: Children with an over-responsive SPD show a substantial reduction in their ability to benefit from complementary audiovisual speech, to enhance speech perception in a noisy environment. This has clear implications for performance in the classroom and other learning environments. Impaired multisensory integration may contribute to sensory over-reactivity that is the definitional of SPD.
| S-EPMC7381232 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Multisensory integration can alter information processing, and previous research has shown that such processes are modulated by sensory switch costs and prior experience (e.g., semantic or letter congruence). Here we report an incidental finding demonstrating, for the first time, the interplay between these processes and experimental factors, specifically the presence (vs. absence) of the experimenter in the testing room. Experiment 1 demonstrates that multisensory motor facilitation in response to audiovisual stimuli (circle and tone with no prior learnt associations) is higher in those trials in which the sensory modality switches than when it repeats. Those participants who completed the study while alone exhibited increased RT variability. Experiment 2 replicated these findings using the letters "b" and "d" presented as unisensory stimuli or congruent and incongruent multisensory stimuli (i.e., grapheme-phoneme pairs). Multisensory enhancements were inflated following a sensory switch; that is, congruent and incongruent multisensory stimuli resulted in significant gains following a sensory switch in the monitored condition. However, when the participants were left alone, multisensory enhancements were only observed for repeating incongruent multisensory stimuli. These incidental findings therefore suggest that the effects of letter congruence and sensory switching on multisensory integration are partly modulated by the presence of an experimenter.
| S-EPMC7736551 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Integration of sensory information across modalities can confer behavioral advantages by decreasing perceptual ambiguity, increasing reaction time, and increasing detection accuracy relative to unisensory stimuli. We asked how combinations of auditory, visual, and somatosensory events alter response time. Participants detected stimulation on one side of space (right or left) while ignoring stimulation on the other side of space. There were seven types of suprathreshold stimuli: auditory (tones from speakers), visual (sinusoidal contrast gratings), somatosensory (fingertip vibrations), audio-visual, somato-visual, audio-somatosensory, and audio-somato-visual. Response enhancement and race model analysis confirmed that bisensory and trisensory trials enhanced response time relative to unisensory trials. Exploratory analysis of individual differences in intersensory facilitation revealed that participants fit into one of two groups: those who benefitted from trisensory information and those who did not.
| S-EPMC5564512 | biostudies-other
Project description:Responses of neurons that integrate multiple sensory inputs are traditionally characterized in terms of a set of empirical principles. However, a simple computational framework that accounts for these empirical features of multisensory integration has not been established. We propose that divisive normalization, acting at the stage of multisensory integration, can account for many of the empirical principles of multisensory integration shown by single neurons, such as the principle of inverse effectiveness and the spatial principle. This model, which uses a simple functional operation (normalization) for which there is considerable experimental support, also accounts for the recent observation that the mathematical rule by which multisensory neurons combine their inputs changes with cue reliability. The normalization model, which makes a strong testable prediction regarding cross-modal suppression, may therefore provide a simple unifying computational account of the important features of multisensory integration by neurons.
| S-EPMC3102778 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The basal ganglia are involved in sensorimotor functions and action selection, both of which require the integration of sensory information. In order to determine how such sensory inputs are integrated, we obtained whole-cell recordings in mouse dorsal striatum during presentation of tactile and visual stimuli. All recorded neurons responded to bilateral whisker stimulation, and a subpopulation also responded to visual stimulation. Neurons responding to both visual and tactile stimuli were located in dorsomedial striatum, whereas those responding only to whisker deflections were located dorsolaterally. Responses were mediated by overlapping excitation and inhibition, with excitation onset preceding that of inhibition by several milliseconds. Responses differed according to the type of neuron, with direct pathway MSNs having larger responses and longer latencies between ipsilateral and contralateral responses than indirect pathway MSNs. Our results suggest that striatum acts as a sensory "hub" with specialized functional roles for the different neuron types.
| S-EPMC4157575 | biostudies-literature
Project description: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.
| S-EPMC8301880 | biostudies-literature
Project description:According to the Bayesian framework of multisensory integration, audiovisual stimuli associated with a stronger prior belief that they share a common cause (i.e., causal prior) are predicted to result in a greater degree of perceptual binding and therefore greater audiovisual integration. In the present psychophysical study, we systematically manipulated the causal prior while keeping sensory evidence constant. We paired auditory and visual stimuli during an association phase to be spatiotemporally either congruent or incongruent, with the goal of driving the causal prior in opposite directions for different audiovisual pairs. Following this association phase, every pairwise combination of the auditory and visual stimuli was tested in a typical ventriloquism-effect (VE) paradigm. The size of the VE (i.e., the shift of auditory localization towards the spatially discrepant visual stimulus) indicated the degree of multisensory integration. Results showed that exposure to an audiovisual pairing as spatiotemporally congruent compared to incongruent resulted in a larger subsequent VE (Experiment 1). This effect was further confirmed in a second VE paradigm, where the congruent and the incongruent visual stimuli flanked the auditory stimulus, and a VE in the direction of the congruent visual stimulus was shown (Experiment 2). Since the unisensory reliabilities for the auditory or visual components did not change after the association phase, the observed effects are likely due to changes in multisensory binding by association learning. As suggested by Bayesian theories of multisensory processing, our findings support the existence of crossmodal causal priors that are flexibly shaped by experience in a changing world.
| S-EPMC7536156 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Healthy aging is typically accompanied by a decrease in the motor capacity. Although the disrupted neural representations and performance of movement have been observed in older age in previous studies, the relationship between the functional integration of sensory-motor (SM) system and aging could be further investigated. In this study, we examine the impact of healthy aging on the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the SM system, and investigate as to how aging is affecting the rsFC in SM network. The SM network was identified and evaluated in 52 healthy older adults and 51 younger adults using two common data analytic approaches: independent component analysis and seed-based functional connectivity (seed at bilateral M1 and S1). We then evaluated whether the altered rsFC of the SM network could delineate trajectories of the age of older adults using a machine learning methodology. Compared with the younger adults, the older demonstrated reduced functional integration with increasing age in the mid-posterior insula of SM network and increased rsFC among the sensorimotor cortex. Moreover, the reduction in the rsFC of mid-posterior insula is associated with the age of older adults. Critically, the analysis based on two-aspect connectivity-based prediction frameworks revealed that the age of older adults could be reliably predicted by this reduced rsFC. These findings further indicated that healthy aging has a marked influence on the SM system that would be associated with a reorganization of SM system with aging. Our findings provide further insight into changes in sensorimotor function in the aging brain.
| S-EPMC5216620 | biostudies-literature