Parietal disruption alters audiovisual binding in the sound-induced flash illusion

Selective attention and multisensory integration are fundamental to perception, but little is known about whether, or under what circumstances, these processes interact to shape conscious awareness. Here, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate the causal role of attention-rel...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Fla.), 2012-09, Vol.62 (3), p.1334-1341
Main Authors: Kamke, Marc R., Vieth, Harrison E., Cottrell, David, Mattingley, Jason B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Angular gyrus
Attention
Attention - physiology
Auditory Perception - physiology
Female
Flash illusion
Humans
Illusions - physiology
Male
Multisensory integration
Parietal Lobe - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Reporting requirements
Selective attention
Sound
Studies
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Visual Perception - physiology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Selective attention and multisensory integration are fundamental to perception, but little is known about whether, or under what circumstances, these processes interact to shape conscious awareness. Here, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate the causal role of attention-related brain networks in multisensory integration between visual and auditory stimuli in the sound-induced flash illusion. The flash illusion is a widely studied multisensory phenomenon in which a single flash of light is falsely perceived as multiple flashes in the presence of irrelevant sounds. We investigated the hypothesis that extrastriate regions involved in selective attention, specifically within the right parietal cortex, exert an influence on the multisensory integrative processes that cause the flash illusion. We found that disruption of the right angular gyrus, but not of the adjacent supramarginal gyrus or of a sensory control site, enhanced participants' veridical perception of the multisensory events, thereby reducing their susceptibility to the illusion. Our findings suggest that the same parietal networks that normally act to enhance perception of attended events also play a role in the binding of auditory and visual stimuli in the sound-induced flash illusion. ► Irrelevant sounds induce a double-flash illusion. ► Disruption of parietal cortex decreases susceptibility to the flash illusion. ► Attention-related neural networks play a critical role in the flash illusion. ► Attention-related neural networks are involved in multisensory integration.
ISSN:1053-8119
1095-9572
DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.05.063