scholarly journals Multisensory perception reflects individual differences in processing temporal correlations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron R. Nidiffer ◽  
Adele Diederich ◽  
Ramnarayan Ramachandran ◽  
Mark T. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Multisensory Perception ◽  
Single Event ◽  
Temporal Correlations ◽  
Processing Abilities ◽  
Threshold Amplitude ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Temporally Correlated ◽  
Correlated Signals

AbstractSensory signals originating from a single event, such as audiovisual speech, are temporally correlated. Correlated signals are known to facilitate multisensory integration and binding. We sought to further elucidate the nature of this relationship, hypothesizing that multisensory perception will vary with the strength of audiovisual correlation. Human participants detected near-threshold amplitude modulations in auditory and/or visual stimuli. During audiovisual trials, the frequency and phase of auditory modulations were varied, producing signals with a range of correlations. After accounting for individual differences which likely reflect relative temporal processing abilities of participants’ auditory and visual systems, we found that multisensory perception varied linearly with strength of correlation. Diffusion modelling confirmed this and revealed that correlation is supplied to the decisional system as sensory evidence. These data implicate correlation as an important cue in audiovisual feature integration and binding and suggest correlational strength as an important factor for flexibility in these processes.

scholarly journals Multisensory perception reflects individual differences in processing temporal correlations

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron R. Nidiffer ◽  
Adele Diederich ◽  
Ramnarayan Ramachandran ◽  
Mark T. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Multisensory Perception ◽  
Temporal Correlations

scholarly journals Introduction to the Special Issue on Individual Differences in Multisensory Perception: an Overview

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 461-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Jonas ◽  
Mary Jane Spiller ◽  
Paul B. Hibbard ◽  
Michael Proulx
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Great Depth ◽  
Developmental Changes ◽  
Psychological Characteristics ◽  
Sensory Loss ◽  
Multisensory Perception ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
British Psychological Society ◽  
The World ◽  
New Research

The world is full of objects that can be perceived through multiple different senses to create an integrated understanding of our environment. Since each of us has different biological and psychological characteristics, different people may perceive the world in quite different ways. However, the questions of how and why our multisensory perceptions differ have not been explored in any great depth. This special issue, arising from a series of British Psychological Society-funded seminars, presents new research and opinions on the impacts of a variety of individual differences on multisensory perception. We hope that readers will enjoy this collection of eight papers on individual differences in multisensory perception arising from developmental changes, autism, Down syndrome, migraine, sensory loss and substitution, and personality.

A Cognitive Processing Account of Individual Differences in Novice Logo Programmers' Conceptualisation and Use of Recursion

1995 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Cognitive Profiles ◽  
Progressive Development ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Processing Abilities ◽  
Logo Programming ◽  
Problem Solving Behavior

This article describes a study which investigated individual differences in the construction of mental models of recursion in Logo programming. It was hypothesized that differences in individuals' cognitive profiles would be reflected in differences in their computer programming problem solving behavior. The learning process was investigated from the perspective of Norman's mental models theory and employed diSessa's ontology regarding distributed, functional, and surrogate mental models. Analysis of the processes underlying mental model construction and of individual differences in these processes was based on the Luria model of brain function with particular regard to the relative contribution of simultaneous and successive cognitive processing abilities to conscious mental activity. Results generally confirmed predictions regarding the involvement of these abilities in the manifestation of individual differences in the stages of conscious mental activity contributing to the progressive development of mental models of recursion.

Role of Precise Spike Timing in Coding of Dynamic Vibrissa Stimuli in Somatosensory Thalamus

2007 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 1871-1882 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo A. Montemurro ◽  
Stefano Panzeri ◽  
Miguel Maravall ◽  
Andrea Alenda ◽  
Michael R. Bale ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Firing Rate ◽  
Barrel Cortex ◽  
Neural Code ◽  
Spike Timing ◽  
Unit Recording ◽  
Temporal Correlations ◽  
Independent Information ◽  
Temporally Correlated ◽  
Spike Patterns

Rats discriminate texture by whisking their vibrissae across the surfaces of objects. This process induces corresponding vibrissa vibrations, which must be accurately represented by neurons in the somatosensory pathway. In this study, we investigated the neural code for vibrissa motion in the ventroposterior medial (VPm) nucleus of the thalamus by single-unit recording. We found that neurons conveyed a great deal of information (up to 77.9 bits/s) about vibrissa dynamics. The key was precise spike timing, which typically varied by less than a millisecond from trial to trial. The neural code was sparse, the average spike being remarkably informative (5.8 bits/spike). This implies that as few as four VPm spikes, coding independent information, might reliably differentiate between 106 textures. To probe the mechanism of information transmission, we compared the role of time-varying firing rate to that of temporally correlated spike patterns in two ways: 93.9% of the information encoded by a neuron could be accounted for by a hypothetical neuron with the same time-dependent firing rate but no correlations between spikes; moreover, ≥93.4% of the information in the spike trains could be decoded even if temporal correlations were ignored. Taken together, these results suggest that the essence of the VPm code for vibrissa motion is firing rate modulation on a submillisecond timescale. The significance of such a code may be that it enables a small number of neurons, firing only few spikes, to convey distinctions between very many different textures to the barrel cortex.

scholarly journals Trial-by-trial fluctuations in amygdala activity track motivational enhancement of desirable sensory evidence during perceptual decision-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ren Paterson ◽  
Yizhou Lyu ◽  
Yuan Chang Leong
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sensory Processing ◽  
Behavior Modeling ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Amygdala Activity ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Human Participants

AbstractPeople are biased towards seeing outcomes that they are motivated to see. For example, sports fans of opposing teams often perceive the same ambiguous foul in favor of the team they support. Here, we test the hypothesis that amygdala-dependent allocation of visual attention facilitates motivational biases in perceptual decision-making. Human participants were rewarded for correctly categorizing an ambiguous image into one of two categories while undergoing fMRI. On each trial, we used a financial bonus to motivate participants to see one category over another. The reward maximizing strategy was to perform the categorization task accurately, but participants were biased towards categorizing the images as the category we motivated them to see. Heightened amygdala activity preceded motivation consistent categorizations, and participants with higher amygdala activation exhibited stronger motivational biases in their perceptual reports. Trial-by-trial amygdala activity was associated with stronger enhancement of neural activity encoding desirable percepts in sensory cortices, suggesting that amygdala-dependent effects on perceptual decisions arose from biased sensory processing. Analyses using a drift diffusion model provide converging evidence that trial-by-trial amygdala activity was associated with stronger motivational biases in the accumulation of sensory evidence. Prior work examining biases in perceptual decision-making have focused on the role of frontoparietal regions. Our work highlights an important contribution of the amygdala. When people are motivated to see one outcome over another, the amygdala biases perceptual decisions towards those outcomes.Significance StatementForming accurate perceptions of the environment is essential for adaptive behavior. People however are biased towards seeing what they want to see, giving rise to inaccurate perceptions and erroneous decisions. Here, we combined behavior, modeling, and fMRI to show that the bias towards seeing desirable percepts is related to trial-by-trial fluctuations in amygdala activity. In particular, during moments with higher amygdala activity, sensory processing is biased in favor of desirable percepts, such that participants are more likely to see what they want to see. These findings highlight the role of the amygdala in biasing visual perception, and shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying the influence of motivation and reward on how people decide what they see.

scholarly journals Epigenetic Modification of the Oxytocin and Glucocorticoid Receptor Genes is linked to Attachment Avoidance in young Adults

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsachi Ein-Dor ◽  
Willem J.M.I. Verbeke ◽  
Michal Mokry ◽  
Pascal Vrticka
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Glucocorticoid Receptor ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Epigenetic Modification ◽  
Gene Promoter ◽  
Environment Interaction ◽  
Attachment Avoidance ◽  
Attachment Orientations ◽  
Pair Bonds ◽  
Human Participants

Attachment in the context of intimate pair bonds is most frequently studied in terms of the universal strategy to draw near, or away, from significant others at moments of personal distress. However, important inter-individual differences in the quality of attachment exist, usually captured through secure versus insecure – anxious and/or avoidant – attachment orientations. Since Bowlby's pioneering writings on the theory of attachment (e.g. Bowlby, 1969), it has been assumed that attachment orientations are influenced by both genetic and social factors – what we would today describe and measure as gene by environment interaction mediated by epigenetic DNA modification –, but research in humans on this topic remains extremely limited. We for the first time examined relations between intra-individual differences in attachment and epigenetic modification of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) and glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1) gene promoter in 109 young adult human participants. Our results revealed that attachment avoidance was significantly and specifically associated with increased OXTR and NR3C1 promoter methylation. These findings offer first tentative clues on the possible etiology of attachment avoidance in humans by showing epigenetic modification in genes related to both social stress regulation and HPA axis functioning.

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