title: The interactions of multisensory integration with endogenous and exogenous attention.
abstract: Stimuli from multiple sensory organs can be integrated into a coherent representation through multiple phases of multisensory processing; this phenomenon is called multisensory integration. Multisensory integration can interact with attention. Here, we propose a framework in which attention modulates multisensory processing in both endogenous (goal-driven) and exogenous (stimulus-driven) ways. Moreover, multisensory integration exerts not only bottom-up but also top-down control over attention. Specifically, we propose the following: (1) endogenous attentional selectivity acts on multiple levels of multisensory processing to determine the extent to which simultaneous stimuli from different modalities can be integrated; (2) integrated multisensory events exert top-down control on attentional capture via multisensory search templates that are stored in the brain; (3) integrated multisensory events can capture attention efficiently, even in quite complex circumstances, due to their increased salience compared to unimodal events and can thus improve search accuracy; and (4) within a multisensory object, endogenous attention can spread from one modality to another in an exogenous manner.
authors.affiliation: College of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, 850 Huanghe Road, Shahekou District, Dalian, Liaoning, 116029, China; Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-naka, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan.
authors.forename: Xiaoyu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Biomimetic Robots and System, Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Control and Decision of Complex Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, 5 Nandajie, Zhongguancun, Haidian, Beijing 100081, China; Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-naka, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan. Electronic address: wu@mech.okayama-u.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Jinglong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center, School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, CAS Key Laboratory of Brain Functions and Disease, Hefei, China; Center for Advanced Therapeutic Strategies for Brain Disorders, Roskamp Institute, Sarasota, FL 34243, USA.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shen
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Attention; Attentional selectivity; Cross-modal spread of attention; Endogenous attention; Exogenous attention; Multisensory integration; Multisensory processing; Multisensory search templates