title: Brain responses to auditory and visual stimulus offset: shared representations of temporal edges.
abstract: Edges are crucial for the formation of coherent objects from sequential sensory inputs within a single modality. Moreover, temporally coincident boundaries of perceptual objects across different sensory modalities facilitate crossmodal integration. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging in order to examine the neural basis of temporal edge detection across modalities. Onsets of sensory inputs are not only related to the detection of an edge but also to the processing of novel sensory inputs. Thus, we used transitions from input to rest (offsets) as convenient stimuli for studying the neural underpinnings of visual and acoustic edge detection per se. We found, besides modality-specific patterns, shared visual and auditory offset-related activity in the superior temporal sulcus and insula of the right hemisphere. Our data suggest that right hemispheric regions known to be involved in multisensory processing are crucial for detection of edges in the temporal domain across both visual and auditory modalities. This operation is likely to facilitate cross-modal object feature binding based on temporal coincidence.
authors.affiliation: University Hospital of Psychiatry Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Marcus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Herdener
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lehmann
authors.forename: Fabrizio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Esposito
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: di Salle
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Federspiel
authors.forename: Dominik R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Bach
authors.forename: Klaus
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Scheffler
authors.forename: Erich
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Seifritz
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*