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Semantic factors influence multisensory pairing: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study
Pourtois,G.R.C. de Gelder,B.
Pourtois,G.R.C.
de Gelder,B.
Abstract
It is traditionally assumed that temporal and spatial factors determine whether information provided by different sensory modalities is combined in a single percept. However, neuropsychological reports of selective damage to audio-visual integration and recent neurophysiological results suggest that semantic factors related to the content of the stimuli could also play a role. As a means of extending evidence provided by neuropsychological dissociations we set up a direct comparison of two kinds of audio-visual pairs with different semantic properties and used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). We investigated the selective impact of TMS on two kinds of audio-visual pairings presented under identical spatio-temporal conditions (face-voice and tone-shape pairings). Our results show that TMS applied over the left posterior parietal cortex at 200 ms disrupted audio-visual integration for the tone-shape pairings but not for the face-voice ones. Our data are consistent with neuropsychological findings and indicate that besides the well-known dimensions of spatial and temporal contiguity, content is an important determinant of audio-visual integration. Our study also illustrates the usefulness of TMS for addressing the role of semantic factors in multi-sensory perception
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2002
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Pourtois, G R C & de Gelder, B 2002, 'Semantic factors influence multisensory pairing : a transcranial magnetic stimulation study', Neuroreport, vol. 13, no. 12, pp. 1567-1573.