Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 29, 2025

Using the Race Model Inequality to Quantify Behavioral Multisensory Integration Effects
Published on: May 10, 2019
Noise-rearing precludes the behavioral benefits of multisensory integration
Naomi L Bean1, Scott A Smyre1, Barry E Stein1
1Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd., Winston Salem, NC 27157, United States.
Abstract:
Concordant visual-auditory stimuli enhance the responses of individual superior colliculus (SC) neurons. This neuronal capacity for "multisensory integration" is not innate: it is acquired only after substantial cross-modal (e.g. auditory-visual) experience. Masking transient auditory cues by raising animals in omnidirectional sound ("noise-rearing") precludes their ability to obtain this experience and the ability of the SC to construct a normal multisensory (auditory-visual) transform. SC responses to combinations of concordant visual-auditory stimuli are depressed, rather than enhanced. The present experiments examined the behavioral consequence of this rearing condition in a simple detection/localization task. In the first experiment, the auditory component of the concordant cross-modal pair was novel, and only the visual stimulus was a target. In the second experiment, both component stimuli were targets. Noise-reared animals failed to show multisensory performance benefits in either experiment. These results reveal a close parallel between behavior and single neuron physiology in the multisensory deficits that are induced when noise disrupts early visual-auditory experience.
More Related Videos
09:13Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Published on: April 22, 2015
11:39Assessment of Audio-Tactile Sensory Substitution Training in Participants with Profound Deafness Using the Event-Related Potential Technique
Published on: September 7, 2022
Related Concept Videos
Auditory Perception
Sensory Modalities
General senses refer to the broad category of sensory information detected by receptors in the body and can be further grouped into somatic and visceral senses. Somatic sensations include touch, pressure, temperature, and pain and are essential for navigating our environment and...
Sound Waves: Interference
Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System
The receptor level:
The receptor level is the first stage of sensation. It involves the detection of a stimulus by specialized sensory receptors. The stimulus must arrive within the receptor's receptive field. Next, the receptor converts the energy of the...
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by...
Auditory Pathway
When viewed cross-sectionally, the cochlea reveals the scala vestibuli and scala tympani flanking...