Behavioural benefits of multisensory processing in ferrets

Abstract

Enhanced detection and discrimination, along with faster reaction times, are the most typical behavioural manifestations of the brain's capacity to integrate multisensory signals arising from the same object. In this study, we examined whether multisensory behavioural gains are observable across different components of the localization response that are potentially under the command of distinct brain regions. We measured the ability of ferrets to localize unisensory (auditory or visual) and spatiotemporally coincident auditory-visual stimuli of different durations that were presented from one of seven locations spanning the frontal hemifield. During the localization task, we recorded the head movements made following stimulus presentation, as a metric for assessing the initial orienting response of the ferrets, as well as the subsequent choice of which target location to approach to receive a reward. Head-orienting responses to auditory-visual stimuli were more accurate and faster than those made to visual but not auditory targets, suggesting that these movements were guided principally by sound alone. In contrast, approach-to-target localization responses were more accurate and faster to spatially congruent auditory-visual stimuli throughout the frontal hemifield than to either visual or auditory stimuli alone. Race model inequality analysis of head-orienting reaction times and approach-totarget response times indicates that different processes, probability summation and neural integration, respectively, are likely to be responsible for the effects of multisensory stimulation on these two measures of localization behaviour.

Context-dependent cross-modal interaction in the medial prefrontal cortex of rats

“…When performing the task, rats showed shorter reaction times in multisensory conditions. This result is consistent with what was observed in many previous studies conducted in both humans and animals [40][41][42][43]. Of especial relevance to our finding here, it has been shown that a task-irrelevant auditory stimulus could shorten the reaction time of responding to visual cues [44] and multisensory processing of both semantic congruent and incongruent stimuli could speed up reaction time [42].…”

Development, organization and plasticity of auditory circuits: Lessons from a cherished colleague

“…Fortunately, it turned out that ferrets can be readily trained to carry out sensory tasks. This species is increasingly being used to study aspects of visual (Garipis & Hoffmann, ; Von Melchner, Pallas & Sur, ; Zhou, Yu, Sellers & Fröhlich, ) and multisensory behaviour (Hammond‐Kenny, Bajo, King & Nodal, ; Hollensteiner, Pieper, Engler, König & Engel, ), and has been employed extensively in a range of auditory detection, discrimination and localization tasks (reviewed by Fritz, Elhilali, David & Shamma, ; Nodal & King, ).…”

Re-weighting of Sound Localization Cues by Audiovisual Training

“…Further evidence that cue reliability may determine how multisensory spatial information is integrated is provided by the demonstration that co-located visual cues can both improve the accuracy of sound localization judgments (Bolognini et al, 2007; Tabry et al, 2013; Hammond-Kenny et al, 2017) and contribute to the suppression of echoes (Bishop et al, 2011). Adaptive changes in sound localization accuracy following manipulation of auditory spatial cues can take place, however, in the absence of visual feedback (Kacelnik et al, 2006; Carlile and Blackman, 2014; Zonooz et al, 2019).…”