Audiovisual interaction enhances auditory detection in late stage: an event-related potential study

Although many behavioral studies have investigated auditory detection enhancement by crossmodal audiovisual interaction, the results are controversial. In addition, no neuroimaging studies that identify this phenomenon have been conducted. Therefore, we used event-related potential (ERP) measures to investigate this phenomenon by comparing the ERPs elicited by the audiovisual stimuli to the sum of the ERPs elicited by the visual and auditory stimuli, and identified two brain regions that showed significantly different responses: the centro-medial area at 280-300 ms after the presentation of the stimulus and the right fronto-temporal area at 300-320 ms after the presentation of the stimulus. The ERP results suggested that the behavioral enhancement of auditory detection results from late-stage cognitive processes rather than early-stage sensory processes.