Sensory integration in the perception of vertical

Amelia Crossbrown, Psychology, Trinity College Dublin

Abstract
Understanding the mechanisms which process visual spatial orientation has long been a fundamental goal of research in vision science, involving a combination of psychophysical, neurophysiological and computational approaches. The visual cortex supports populations of neurons that are sensitive to visual contours defined by many different features (eg luminance, texture, disparity, colour, contrast). One of the computational tasks of the central nervous system is therefore to combine these multiple sources of information concerning object orientation. Recent work (Popple and Levi, 2004: Vision Research, 44, pp3081-3090) suggests that orientation discrimination using multiple cues is consistent with a weighted Bayesian decision process. Following recent application of this approach to perception of objects defined by multiple sources of sensory information, we investigate whether the perceived orientation of a visual object could be modulated through the addition of auditory orientation cues. Our results suggest that simultaneous presentation of auditory cues improves the certainty of orientation discrimination of a visual object. Furthermore we show that the perceived orientation of a visual object can also be systematically modulated by an oriented auditory source.

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