title: Where are multisensory signals combined for perceptual decision-making?
abstract: Multisensory integration is observed in many subcortical and cortical locations including primary and non-primary sensory cortex, and higher cortical areas including frontal and parietal cortex. During unisensory perceptual tasks many of these same brain areas show neural signatures associated with decision-making. It is unclear whether multisensory representations in sensory cortex directly inform decision-making in a multisensory task, or if cross-modal signals are only combined after the accumulation of unisensory evidence at a final decision-making stage in higher cortical areas. Manipulations of neuronal activity are required to establish causal roles for given brain regions in multisensory perceptual decision-making, and so far indicate that distributed networks underlie multisensory decision-making. Understanding multisensory integration requires synthesis of small-scale pathway specific and large-scale network level manipulations.
authors.affiliation: UCL Ear Institute, 332 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8EE, UK. Electronic address: j.bizley@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Jennifer K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Bizley
authors.affiliation: UCL Ear Institute, 332 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8EE, UK.
authors.forename: Gareth P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.affiliation: UCL Ear Institute, 332 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8EE, UK.
authors.forename: Stephen M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Town
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D056228:Feedback, Sensory / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D015398:Signal Transduction