Skip Navigation


Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on January 6, 2008
Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(7):1560-1574; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm187
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Supplementary Material
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
18/7/1560    most recent
bhm187v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Kayser, C.
Right arrow Articles by Logothetis, N. K.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Kayser, C.
Right arrow Articles by Logothetis, N. K.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Visual Modulation of Neurons in Auditory Cortex

Christoph Kayser1, Christopher I. Petkov1 and Nikos K. Logothetis1,2

1 Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Spemannstrasse 38, 72076 Tübingen, Germany, 2 Division of Imaging Science and Biomedical Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Address correspondence to email: christoph.kayser{at}tuebingen.mpg.de.

Our brain integrates the information provided by the different sensory modalities into a coherent percept, and recent studies suggest that this process is not restricted to higher association areas. Here we evaluate the hypothesis that auditory cortical fields are involved in cross-modal processing by probing individual neurons for audiovisual interactions. We find that visual stimuli modulate auditory processing both at the level of field potentials and single-unit activity and already in primary and secondary auditory fields. These interactions strongly depend on a stimulus’ efficacy in driving the neurons but occur independently of stimulus category and for naturalistic as well as artificial stimuli. In addition, interactions are sensitive to the relative timing of audiovisual stimuli and are strongest when visual stimuli lead by 20–80 msec. Exploring the underlying mechanisms, we find that enhancement correlates with the resetting of slow (~10 Hz) oscillations to a phase angle of optimal excitability. These results demonstrate that visual stimuli can modulate the firing of neurons in auditory cortex in a manner that depends on stimulus efficacy and timing. These neurons thus meet the criteria for sensory integration and provide the auditory modality with multisensory contextual information about co-occurring environmental events.

Key Words: audiovisual • cross-modal • electrophysiology • local field potential • macaque monkey • multisensory


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.