Asynchrony adaptation reveals neural population code for audio-visual timing
The relative timing of auditory and visual stimuli is a critical cue for determining whether sensory signals relate to a common source and for making inferences about causality. However, the way in which the brain represents temporal relationships remains poorly understood. Recent studies indicate t...
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| Format: | Online |
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The Royal Society
2011
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3061136/ |
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pubmed-30611362011-03-28 Asynchrony adaptation reveals neural population code for audio-visual timing Roach, Neil W. Heron, James Whitaker, David McGraw, Paul V. Research Articles The relative timing of auditory and visual stimuli is a critical cue for determining whether sensory signals relate to a common source and for making inferences about causality. However, the way in which the brain represents temporal relationships remains poorly understood. Recent studies indicate that our perception of multisensory timing is flexible—adaptation to a regular inter-modal delay alters the point at which subsequent stimuli are judged to be simultaneous. Here, we measure the effect of audio-visual asynchrony adaptation on the perception of a wide range of sub-second temporal relationships. We find distinctive patterns of induced biases that are inconsistent with the previous explanations based on changes in perceptual latency. Instead, our results can be well accounted for by a neural population coding model in which: (i) relative audio-visual timing is represented by the distributed activity across a relatively small number of neurons tuned to different delays; (ii) the algorithm for reading out this population code is efficient, but subject to biases owing to under-sampling; and (iii) the effect of adaptation is to modify neuronal response gain. These results suggest that multisensory timing information is represented by a dedicated population code and that shifts in perceived simultaneity following asynchrony adaptation arise from analogous neural processes to well-known perceptual after-effects. The Royal Society 2011-05-07 2010-10-20 /pmc/articles/PMC3061136/ /pubmed/20961905 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.1737 Text en This Journal is © 2010 The Royal Society http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Roach, Neil W. Heron, James Whitaker, David McGraw, Paul V. |
| spellingShingle |
Roach, Neil W. Heron, James Whitaker, David McGraw, Paul V. Asynchrony adaptation reveals neural population code for audio-visual timing |
| author_facet |
Roach, Neil W. Heron, James Whitaker, David McGraw, Paul V. |
| author_sort |
Roach, Neil W. |
| title |
Asynchrony adaptation reveals neural population code for audio-visual timing |
| title_short |
Asynchrony adaptation reveals neural population code for audio-visual timing |
| title_full |
Asynchrony adaptation reveals neural population code for audio-visual timing |
| title_fullStr |
Asynchrony adaptation reveals neural population code for audio-visual timing |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Asynchrony adaptation reveals neural population code for audio-visual timing |
| title_sort |
asynchrony adaptation reveals neural population code for audio-visual timing |
| description |
The relative timing of auditory and visual stimuli is a critical cue for determining whether sensory signals relate to a common source and for making inferences about causality. However, the way in which the brain represents temporal relationships remains poorly understood. Recent studies indicate that our perception of multisensory timing is flexible—adaptation to a regular inter-modal delay alters the point at which subsequent stimuli are judged to be simultaneous. Here, we measure the effect of audio-visual asynchrony adaptation on the perception of a wide range of sub-second temporal relationships. We find distinctive patterns of induced biases that are inconsistent with the previous explanations based on changes in perceptual latency. Instead, our results can be well accounted for by a neural population coding model in which: (i) relative audio-visual timing is represented by the distributed activity across a relatively small number of neurons tuned to different delays; (ii) the algorithm for reading out this population code is efficient, but subject to biases owing to under-sampling; and (iii) the effect of adaptation is to modify neuronal response gain. These results suggest that multisensory timing information is represented by a dedicated population code and that shifts in perceived simultaneity following asynchrony adaptation arise from analogous neural processes to well-known perceptual after-effects. |
| publisher |
The Royal Society |
| publishDate |
2011 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3061136/ |
| _version_ |
1611446257489805312 |