Crossmodal Spatial Influences of Touch on Extrastriate Visual Areas Take Current Gaze Direction into Account

Recent results indicate that crossmodal interactions can affect activity in cortical regions traditionally regarded as "unimodal." Previously we found that combining touch on one hand with visual stimulation in the anatomically corresponding hemifield could boost responses in contralateral visual cortex. Here we manipulated which visual hemifield corresponded to the location of the stimulated hand, by changing gaze direction such that right-hand touch could now arise in either the left or right visual field. Crossmodal effects on visual cortex switched from one hemisphere to the other, depending on gaze direction, regardless of whether the hand was seen. This indicates that crossmodal influences of touch upon visual cortex depend on spatial alignment for the multimodal stimuli, with gaze posture taken into account.

[1]  R. Campbell,et al.  Evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging of crossmodal binding in the human heteromodal cortex , 2000, Current Biology.

[2]  E. Bizzi,et al.  The Cognitive Neurosciences , 1996 .

[3]  K. Zilles,et al.  Polymodal Motion Processing in Posterior Parietal and Premotor Cortex A Human fMRI Study Strongly Implies Equivalencies between Humans and Monkeys , 2001, Neuron.

[4]  L M Ward,et al.  Multisensory integration and crossmodal attention effects in the human brain. , 2001, Science.

[5]  L. Snyder.  Coordinate transformations for eye and arm movements in the brain , 2000, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[6]  Gereon R. Fink,et al.  Space Coding in Primate Posterior Parietal Cortex , 2001, NeuroImage.

[7]  Scott T. Grafton,et al.  Feeling with the mind's eye , 1997, Neuroreport.

[8]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  A unified statistical approach for determining significant signals in images of cerebral activation , 1996, Human brain mapping.

[9]  M. Goldberg,et al.  Ventral intraparietal area of the macaque: congruent visual and somatic response properties. , 1998, Journal of neurophysiology.

[10]  B. Stein,et al.  Spatial determinants of multisensory integration in cat superior colliculus neurons. , 1996, Journal of neurophysiology.

[11]  J. Hyvärinen,et al.  Functional properties of neurons in the temporo-parietal association cortex of awake monkey , 2004, Experimental Brain Research.

[12]  C. Gross,et al.  The representation of extrapersonal space: A possible role for bimodal, visual-tactile neurons , 1995 .

[13]  R. Andersen,et al.  Eye-centered, head-centered, and intermediate coding of remembered sound locations in area LIP. , 1996, Journal of neurophysiology.

[14]  C. Spence,et al.  Cross-modal links in exogenous covert spatial orienting between touch, audition, and vision , 1998, Perception & psychophysics.

[15]  B. Stein,et al.  The Merging of the Senses , 1993 .

[16]  J Driver,et al.  Selective spatial attention in vision and touch: unimodal and multimodal mechanisms revealed by PET. , 2000, Journal of neurophysiology.

[17]  E. Macaluso,et al.  Spatial attention and crossmodal interactions between vision and touch , 2001, Neuropsychologia.

[18]  M. Goldberg,et al.  Space and attention in parietal cortex. , 1999, Annual review of neuroscience.

[19]  M. Raichle,et al.  Tactile-vibration-activated foci in insular and parietal-opercular cortex studied with positron emission tomography: mapping the second somatosensory area in humans. , 1993, Somatosensory & motor research.

[20]  W.J.R. Dunseath,et al.  fMRI of the Responses to Vibratory Stimulation of Digit Tips , 2000, NeuroImage.

[21]  S. Hillyard,et al.  Involuntary orienting to sound improves visual perception , 2000, Nature.

[22]  R Kawashima,et al.  Positron-emission tomography studies of cross-modality inhibition in selective attentional tasks: closing the "mind's eye". , 1995, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[23]  John M. Allman,et al.  The Effect of Gaze Angle and Fixation Distance on the Responses of Neurons in V1, V2, and V4 , 2002, Neuron.

[24]  R. Andersen,et al.  Multimodal representation of space in the posterior parietal cortex and its use in planning movements. , 1997, Annual review of neuroscience.

[25]  C. Spence,et al.  Attention and the crossmodal construction of space , 1998, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[26]  E. Bullmore,et al.  Response amplification in sensory-specific cortices during crossmodal binding. , 1999, Neuroreport.

[27]  Joseph S. Gati,et al.  Eye Position Signal Modulates a Human Parietal Pointing Region during Memory-Guided Movements , 2000, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[28]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  The slice-timing problem in event-related fMRI , 1999 .

[29]  C. Spence,et al.  Tactile-Visual Links in Exogenous Spatial Attention under Different Postures: Convergent Evidence from Psychophysics and ERPs , 2001, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[30]  D. Collins,et al.  Automatic 3D Intersubject Registration of MR Volumetric Data in Standardized Talairach Space , 1994, Journal of computer assisted tomography.

[31]  C. Galletti,et al.  Gaze-dependent visual neurons in area V3A of monkey prestriate cortex , 1989, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[32]  M. Kinsbourne,et al.  A model for the mechanism of unilateral neglect of space. , 1970, Transactions of the American Neurological Association.

[33]  S. Shimojo,et al.  Illusions: What you see is what you hear , 2000, Nature.

[34]  J Driver,et al.  An event-related brain potential study of cross-modal links in spatial attention between vision and touch. , 2000, Psychophysiology.

[35]  M. Graziano.  Where is my arm? The relative role of vision and proprioception in the neuronal representation of limb position. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[36]  C. Frith,et al.  Modulation of human visual cortex by crossmodal spatial attention. , 2000, Science.

[37]  J. Downar,et al.  A multimodal cortical network for the detection of changes in the sensory environment , 2000, Nature Neuroscience.

[38]  P. Bertelson,et al.  The ventriloquist effect does not depend on the direction of deliberate visual attention , 2000, Perception & psychophysics.

[39]  Dominic W. Massaro,et al.  Speechreading: illusion or window into pattern recognition , 1999, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[40]  R. Desimone,et al.  Visual properties of neurons in a polysensory area in superior temporal sulcus of the macaque. , 1981, Journal of neurophysiology.

[41]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Distributed processing of pain and vibration by the human brain , 1994, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[42]  J. Fadiman.  Illusions , 1999 .

[43]  C. Spence,et al.  Crossmodal links between vision and touch in covert endogenous spatial attention. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.