Music-to-Color Associations of Single-Line Piano Melodies in Non-synesthetes
Prior research has shown that non-synesthetes’ color associations to classical orchestral music are strongly mediated by emotion. The present study examines similar cross-modal music-to-color associations for much better controlled musical stimuli: 64 single-line piano melodies that were generated from four basic melodies by Mozart, whose global musical parameters were manipulated in tempo (slow/fast), note-density (sparse/dense), mode (major/minor) and pitch-height (low/high). Participants first chose the three colors (from 37) that they judged to be most consistent with (and, later, the three that were most inconsisten...
Source: Multisensory research - April 22, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Stephen E. Palmer, Thomas A. Langlois and Karen B. Schloss Source Type: research
Music-to-Color Associations of Single-Line Piano Melodies in Non-synesthetes (Advance Article)
Prior research has shown that non-synesthetes’ color associations to classical orchestral music are strongly mediated by emotion. The present study examines similar cross-modal music-to-color associations for much better controlled musical stimuli: 64 single-line piano melodies that were generated from four basic melodies by Mozart, whose global musical parameters were manipulated in tempo (slow/fast), note-density (sparse/dense), mode (major/minor) and pitch-height (low/high). Participants first chose the three colors (from 37) that they judged to be most consistent with (and, later, the three that were most inconsisten...
Source: Multisensory research - April 22, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Stephen E. Palmer, Thomas A. Langlois and Karen B. Schloss Source Type: research
The Mechanisms of Size Constancy (Advance Article)
Source: Page Count 31Size constancy is the result of cognitive scaling operations that enable us to perceive an object as having the same size when presented at different viewing distances. In this article, we review the literature on size and distance perception to form an overarching synthesis of how the brain might combine retinal images and distance cues of retinal and extra-retinal origin to produce a perceptual visual experience of a world where objects have a constant size. A convergence of evidence from visual psychophysics, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, electrophysiology and neuroimaging highlight the primary...
Source: Multisensory research - April 22, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Irene Sperandio and Philippe A. Chouinard Source Type: research
Vision and Haptics Share Spatial Attentional Resources and Visuotactile Integration Is Not Affected by High Attentional Load (Advance Article)
Source: Page Count 22Human information processing is limited by attentional resources. Two questions that are discussed in multisensory research are (1) whether there are separate spatial attentional resources for each sensory modality and (2) whether multisensory integration is influenced by attentional load. We investigated these questions using a dual task paradigm: Participants performed two spatial tasks (a multiple object tracking [‘MOT’] task and a localization [‘LOC’] task) either separately (single task condition) or simultaneously (dual task condition). In the MOT task, participants visually tracked a s...
Source: Multisensory research - April 22, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Basil Wahn and Peter König Source Type: research
Contribution of Bodily and Gravitational Orientation Cues to Face and Letter Recognition (Advance Article)
Source: Page Count 16Sensory information provided by the vestibular system is crucial in cognitive processes such as the ability to recognize objects. The orientation at which objects are most easily recognized — the perceptual upright (PU) — is influenced by body orientation with respect to gravity as detected from the somatosensory and vestibular systems. To date, the influence of these sensory cues on the PU has been measured using a letter recognition task. Here we assessed whether gravitational influences on letter recognition also extend to human face recognition. 13 right-handed observers were positioned in fo...
Source: Multisensory research - April 22, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Michael Barnett-Cowan, Jacqueline C. Snow and Jody C. Culham Source Type: research
Vestibular Function and Depersonalization/Derealization Symptoms (Advance Article)
Source: Page Count 15Patients with an acquired sensory dysfunction may experience symptoms of detachment from self or from the environment, which are related primarily to nonspecific symptoms of common mental disorders and secondarily, to the specific sensory dysfunction. This is consistent with the proposal that sensory dysfunction could provoke distress and a discrepancy between the multi-sensory frame given by experience and the actual perception. Both vestibular stimuli and vestibular dysfunction can underlie unreal experiences. Vestibular afferents provide a frame of reference (linear and angular head acceleration) wi...
Source: Multisensory research - April 22, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kathrine Jáuregui Renaud Source Type: research
Disrupting Vestibular Activity Disrupts Body Ownership (Advance Article)
Source: Page Count 10People are more sensitive at detecting asynchrony between a self-generated movement and visual feedback concerning that movement when the movement is viewed from a first-person perspective. We call this the ‘self-advantage’ and interpret it as an objective measure of self. Here we ask if disruption of the vestibular system in healthy individuals affects the self-advantage. Participants performed finger movements while viewing their hand in a first-person (‘self’) or third-person (‘other’) perspective and indicated which of two periods (one with minimum delay and the other with an added dela...
Source: Multisensory research - April 22, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Adria E. N. Hoover and Laurence R. Harris Source Type: research
Gravity in the Brain as a Reference for Space and Time Perception (Advance Article)
Source: Page Count 30Moving and interacting with the environment require a reference for orientation and a scale for calibration in space and time. There is a wide variety of environmental clues and calibrated frames at different locales, but the reference of gravity is ubiquitous on Earth. The pull of gravity on static objects provides a plummet which, together with the horizontal plane, defines a three-dimensional Cartesian frame for visual images. On the other hand, the gravitational acceleration of falling objects can provide a time-stamp on events, because the motion duration of an object accelerated by gravity over a...
Source: Multisensory research - April 22, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Francesco Lacquaniti, Gianfranco Bosco, Silvio Gravano, Iole Indovina, Barbara La Scaleia, Vincenzo Maffei and Myrka Zago Source Type: research
Where Is Size in the Brain of the Beholder? (Advance Article)
Source: Page Count 12Despite advances in our understanding of how the brain represents visual space, it remains unresolved how the subjective experience of an object’s size arises. While responses in retinotopic cortex correlate with perceived size, this does not imply that those brain regions mediate perceived size differences. Here I describe how the percept of an object’s size could be generated in the brain and outline unanswered questions that future research should seek to address. (Source: Multisensory research)
Source: Multisensory research - April 16, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Dietrich Samuel Schwarzkopf Source Type: research
Neural Correlates of Human Echolocation of Path Direction During Walking
Source: Volume 28, Issue 1-2, pp 195 - 226Echolocation can be used by blind and sighted humans to navigate their environment. The current study investigated the neural activity underlying processing of path direction during walking. Brain activity was measured with fMRI in three blind echolocation experts, and three blind and three sighted novices. During scanning, participants listened to binaural recordings that had been made prior to scanning while echolocation experts had echolocated during walking along a corridor which could continue to the left, right, or straight ahead. Participants also listened to control sounds ...
Source: Multisensory research - April 14, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Katja Fiehler, Immo Schütz, Tina Meller and Lore Thaler Source Type: research
Task-Specific, Age Related Effects in the Cross-Modal Identification and Localisation of Objects
Source: Volume 28, Issue 1-2, pp 111 - 151We investigated age-related effects in cross-modal interactions using tasks assessing spatial perception and object perception. Specifically, an audio-visual object identification task and an audio-visual object localisation task were used to assess putatively distinct perceptual functions in four age groups: children (8–11 years), adolescents (12–14 years), young and older adults. Participants were required to either identify or locate target objects. Targets were specified as unisensory (visual/auditory) or multisensory (audio-visual congruent/audio-visual incongruent) stimul...
Source: Multisensory research - April 14, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Maeve M. Barrett and Fiona N. Newell Source Type: research
Two-Dimensional Rubber-Hand Illusion: The Dorian Gray Hand Illusion
Source: Volume 28, Issue 1-2, pp 101 - 110The rubber-hand illusion provides a window into body representation and consciousness. It has been found that body-ownership extended to numerous hand-like objects. Interestingly, the vast majority of these objects were three-dimensional. We adopted this paradigm by using hand drawings to investigate whether rubber-hand illusion could be extended to two-dimensional hand samples, and we measured skin conductance responses and behavioural variables. The fact that this illusion extended to two-dimensional stimuli reveals the dominant role of top–down information on visual perception...
Source: Multisensory research - April 14, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Achille Pasqualotto and Michael J. Proulx Source Type: research
Introduction to the Special Issue on Multisensory Development and Plasticity
Source: Volume 28, Issue 1-2, pp 31 - 32 (Source: Multisensory research)
Source: Multisensory research - April 14, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Monica Gori and Ileana L. Hanganu-Opatz Source Type: research
Visual–Somatosensory Integration is Linked to Physical Activity Level in Older Adults
Source: Volume 28, Issue 1-2, pp 11 - 29Studies examining multisensory integration (MSI) in aging consistently demonstrate greater reaction time (RT) facilitation in old compared to young adults, but often fail to determine the utility of MSI. The aim of the current experiment was to further elucidate the utility of MSI in aging by determining its relationship to physical activity level. 147 non-demented older adults (mean age 77 years; 57% female) participated. Participants were instructed to make speeded responses to visual, somatosensory, and visual–somatosensory (VS) stimuli. Depending on the magnitude of the individ...
Source: Multisensory research - April 14, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Jeannette R. Mahoney, Kristina Dumas and Roee Holtzer Source Type: research
Spatial Frequency Modulates the Degree of Illusory Second Flash Perception
Source: Volume 28, Issue 1-2, pp 1 - 10When a brief single flash is presented simultaneously with two brief beeps, the number of presented flashes is often perceived as two. This phenomenon is referred to as the fission illusion. Several effects related to the fission illusion have been investigated using both psychophysical and neurophysiological methods. The present study examined the effects of spatial frequency on the fission illusion. At a low spatial frequency, transient channels respond preferably; conversely, sustained channels respond preferably at a high spatial frequency. Sustained channels differ in temporal pr...
Source: Multisensory research - April 14, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Yasuhiro Takeshima and Jiro Gyoba Source Type: research
