1School of Precision Instruments and Opto-Electronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
2Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Medical Science and Peking Union Medical College, Tianjin 300192, China
3Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education) and School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
4Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

Abstract 

Multisensory enhancement, as a facilitation phenomenon, is responsible for superior behavioral performance when an individual is responding to cross-modal versus modality-specific stimuli. However, the event-related potential (ERP)counterparts of behavioral multisensory enhancement are not well known. We recorded ERPs and behavioral data from 14 healthy volunteers with three types of target stimuli (modality-specific, bimodal,and trimodal) to examine the spatio-temporal electrophysiological characteristics of multisensory enhancement by comparing behavioral data with ERPs. We found a strong correlation between P3 latency and behavioral performance in terms of reaction time (RT) (R = 0.98, P <0.001), suggesting that P3 latency constitutes a temporal measure of behavioral multisensory enhancement. In addition, a fast RT and short P3 latency were found when comparing the modality-specifi c visual target with the modality-specifi c auditory and somatosensory targets. Our results indicate that behavioral multisensory enhancement can be identified by the latency and source distribution of the P3 component. These findings may advance our understanding of the neuronal mechanisms of multisensory enhancement.

Keywords

multisensory enhancement; temporal measure; P3 latency; visual dominance

[SpringerLink]