Multisensory Perception

Multisensory Perception: From Laboratory to Clinic surveys the current state of knowledge on multisensory processes, synthesizing information from diverse streams of research and defining hypotheses and questions to direct future work. Reflecting the nature of the field, the book is interdisciplinary, comprising the findings and views of writers with diverse backgrounds and varied methods, including psychophysical, neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging approaches. Sections cover basic principles, specific interactions between the senses, the topic of crossmodal correspondences between particular sensory attributes, the related topic of synesthesia, and the clinic. Offers a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the current state of knowledge on multisensory processes Coverage includes basic principles, specific interactions between the senses, crossmodal correspondences and the clinical aspects of multisensory processes Includes psychophysical, neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging approaches

Multisensory Flavor Perception: From Fundamental Neuroscience Through to the Marketplace provides state-of-the-art coverage of the latest insights from the rapidly-expanding world of multisensory flavor research. The book highlights the various types of crossmodal interactions, such as sound and taste, and vision and taste, showing their impact on sensory and hedonic perception, along with their consumption in the context of food and drink. The chapters in this edited volume review the existing literature, also explaining the underlying neural and psychological mechanisms which lead to crossmodal perception of flavor. The book brings together research which has not been presented before, making it the first book in the market to cover the literature of multisensory flavor perception by incorporating the latest in psychophysics and neuroscience. Authored by top academics and world leaders in the field Takes readers on a journey from the neurological underpinnings of multisensory flavor perception, then presenting insights that can be used by food companies to create better flavor sensations for consumers Offers a wide perspective on multisensory flavor perception, an area of rapidly expanding knowledge

Research is suggesting that rather than our senses being independent, perception is fundamentally a multisensory experience. This handbook reviews the evidence and explores the theory of broad underlying principles that govern sensory interactions, regardless of the specific senses involved.

It has become accepted in the neuroscience community that perception and performance are quintessentially multisensory by nature. Using the full palette of modern brain imaging and neuroscience methods, The Neural Bases of Multisensory Processes details current understanding in the neural bases for these phenomena as studied across species, stages of development, and clinical statuses. Organized thematically into nine sub-sections, the book is a collection of contributions by leading scientists in the field. Chapters build generally from basic to applied, allowing readers to ascertain how fundamental science informs the clinical and applied sciences. Topics discussed include: Anatomy, essential for understanding the neural substrates of multisensory processing Neurophysiological bases and how multisensory stimuli can dramatically change the encoding processes for sensory information Combinatorial principles and modeling, focusing on efforts to gain a better mechanistic handle on multisensory operations and their network dynamics Development and plasticity Clinical manifestations and how perception and action are affected by altered sensory experience Attention and spatial representations The last sections of the book focus on naturalistic multisensory processes in three separate contexts: motion signals, multisensory contributions to the perception and generation of communication signals, and how the perception of flavor is generated. The text provides a solid introduction for newcomers and a strong overview of the current state of the field for experts.

Most of the time people perceive using multiple senses. Out walking, we see colors and motion, hear chatter and footsteps, smell petrichor after rain, feel a breeze or the brush of a shoulder. We use our senses together to navigate and learn about the world. In spite of this, scientists and philosophers alike have merely focused on one sense at a time. Nearly every theory of perception is unisensory. This book instead offers a revisionist multisensory philosophy of perception. Casey O'Callaghan considers how our senses work together, in contrast with how they work separately and independently, and how one sense can impact another, leading to surprising perceptual illusions. The joint use of multiple senses, he argues, enables novel forms of perception and experience, such as multisensory rhythms, motions, and flavors that enrich aesthetic experiences of music, dance, and gustatory pleasure.

In recent years there has been a dramatic progress in understanding how stimuli from different sensory modalities are integrated among each other. Multisensory integration results in a unitary representation of the world that strongly characterizes perception and cognition in humans. Knowledge about multi sensory integration has research techniques and approaches, including neurophysiology, experimental psychology, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and computational modelling. This special issue aims at presenting an up-to-date integrative overview of the physiological, psychological, developmental, and functional processes associated with multisensory integration. The proposed collection of papers is organized thematically into sections, each featuring a state-of-the-art review of key themes in multisensory research, from more approaches in the animal, to the study of multisensory perception and cognition in humans. Specifically, this special issue will consider: The physiological mechanisms of multisensory processing in cortical and subcortical brain structures of model animal species, (rat, cat, and monkey); current biologically inspired computational modelling of multisensory integration; evidence about the multisensory contributions to perception in humans, as highlighted by psychophysical and neuropsychological evidence; the neural basis of multisensory processing in the human brain uncovered by recent neuroimaging techniques, including EEG, PET, fMRI; the consequences of the breakdown of normal sensory integration as shown by studies with techniques of brain stimulation in humans; developmental processes of multisensory perception in humans and the constrains for the emergence of multisensory processes in relation to sensory experience; the issue of crossmodal neuroplasticity concerning behavioral and neural changes following sensory deprivation. The challenge of this Research Topic is to provide an interdisciplinary context allowing to understand the basic principles of multisensory integration in humans and the key issues that this fascinating field of study rises for future research.

This book is concerned with sensory cue integration both within and between sensory modalities, and focuses on the emerging way of thinking about cue combination in terms of uncertainty. These probabilistic approaches derive from the realization that our sensors are noisy and moreover are often affected by ambiguity. For example, mechanoreceptor outputs are variable and they cannot distinguish if a perceived force is caused by the weight of an object or by force we are producing ourselves. The probabilistic approaches elaborated in this book aim at formalizing the uncertainty of cues. They describe cue combination as the nervous system's attempt to minimize uncertainty in its estimates and to choose successful actions. Some computational approaches described in the chapters of this book are concerned with the application of such statistical ideas to real-world cue-combination problems. Others ask how uncertainty may be represented in the nervous system and used for cue combination. Importantly, across behavioral, electrophysiological and theoretical approaches, Bayesian statistics is emerging as a common language in which cue-combination problems can be expressed.