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Sensory dominance and multisensory integration as screening tools in aging
Micah M Murray1,2,3,4, Alison F Eardley5, Trudi Edginton6
1The Laboratory for Investigative Neurophysiology (The LINE), Department of Radiology, and Neuropsychology and Neurorehabilitation Service, University Hospital Center and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. micah.murray@chuv.ch.
Scientific Reports
|June 13, 2018
Summary
Older adults and those with mild cognitive impairment show altered sensory dominance. Multisensory tasks can effectively screen for mild cognitive impairment, aiding dementia diagnostics.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Gerontology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Multisensory information processing typically enhances neural and behavioral outcomes compared to unisensory input.
- Aging, both healthy and pathological (mild cognitive impairment), can alter how individuals integrate sensory information.
- Understanding sensory dominance shifts in aging is crucial for cognitive health assessment.
Purpose of the Study:
- To clarify multisensory benefits across healthy young, healthy older, and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) individuals.
- To investigate the utility of a multisensory detection task as a screening tool for MCI.
- To explore the relationship between sensory profiles, multisensory integration, and cognitive aging.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a simple audio-visual detection task to compare three groups: healthy young (HY), healthy older (HO), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
- Administered neuropsychological tests to assess learning and memory impairments.
- Employed Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis to evaluate diagnostic capabilities of the multisensory task.
Main Results:
- A shift towards auditory dominance was observed in both healthy and abnormally aging individuals.
- Enhanced multisensory benefits were specifically noted in visually dominant healthy older adults compared to younger individuals.
- The multisensory detection task, using indices of integration and sensory dominance, reliably differentiated MCI diagnosis.
Conclusions:
- Sensory profiles significantly influence multisensory benefits in aging populations.
- Multisensory detection tasks represent a promising, cost-effective tool for early MCI screening.
- These findings offer new diagnostic avenues for dementia and clarify links between sensory processing and memory in aging.
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