Audiovisual plasticity following early abnormal visual experience: Reduced McGurk effect in people with one eye

• Published in: Neuroscience letters 2018-04, Vol.672, p.103-107
• Main Authors: Moro, Stefania S., Steeves, Jennifer K.E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation; Adult; Audiovisual processing; Auditory Perception - physiology; Face processing; Female; Humans; Illusions - physiology; Male; McGurk effect; Middle Aged; Monocular enucleation; Multisensory; Photic Stimulation; Reaction Time - physiology; Sound Localization - physiology; Vision, Monocular - physiology; Visual Perception - physiology; Voice processing; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0304-3940; 1872-7972
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2018.02.031

•The McGurk effect is a popular tool for studying multisensory integration.•People with one eye process audiovisual stimuli differently from binocular controls.•People with one eye perceive a reduced McGurk effect compared to controls.•Sensory systems of people with one eye adaptively accommodate perception.•Evidence of neural plasticity after the loss of an eye early in life. Previously, we have shown that people who have had one eye surgically removed early in life during visual development have enhanced sound localization [1] and lack visual dominance, commonly observed in binocular and monocular (eye-patched) viewing controls [2]. Despite these changes, people with one eye integrate auditory and visual components of multisensory events optimally [3]. The current study investigates how people with one eye perceive the McGurk effect, an audiovisual illusion where a new syllable is perceived when visual lip movements do not match the corresponding sound [4]. We compared individuals with one eye to binocular and monocular viewing controls and found that they have a significantly smaller McGurk effect compared to binocular controls. Additionally, monocular controls tended to perceive the McGurk effect less often than binocular controls suggesting a small transient modulation of the McGurk effect. These results suggest altered weighting of the auditory and visual modalities with both short and long-term monocular viewing. These results indicate the presence of permanent adaptive perceptual accommodations in people who have lost one eye early in life that may serve to mitigate the loss of binocularity during early brain development.