Johnston PR, Alain C, McIntosh AR. Individual Differences in Multisensory Processing Are Related to Broad Differences in the Balance of Local versus Distributed Information. J Cogn Neurosci. 2022 Mar 31;34(5):846-863. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01835.
Three Key takeaways from this paper.
- Effective multisensory processing, or a narrower TBW (temporal binding window), is associated with more mutual information and less local entropy.
- Neural correlates include temporal and frontal areas previously thought to be linked to integration processes like response selection. Broadly the regions included right superior temporal gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus, right pars triangularis, right caudal anterior cingulate, and left superior frontal gyrus. STS was especially of interest, as past research links it to convergence of auditory and visual inputs.
The research also found more reliable effects in right hemisphere and not so much in left hemisphere. The authors think this could be due to some glitch in research design. Or if true, it means the left is more implicated in multisensory processing tasks, with the right accounting for individual variations.
3. Individual differences in multisensory processing could potentially be explained by the perspective of information theory.
The implication of this being that the balance of distributed versus local information processing may be a useful measure for exploring individual differences in multisensory processing. This is with respect to its relationship to higher cognitive traits like intelligence and problem solving. Also insights into mechanism disruptions seen in autism and schizophrenia.
The paper also says that by better understanding how information is processed across multiple brain regions, researchers may be able to develop more effective interventions aimed at improving performance on tasks requiring coordination between different sensory modalities
Criticique.
Not clear as what comprises local entropy and mutual information Perhaps STS was the local area being looked at and any other are is mutual.
Also local entropy and mutual information are not an either-or constructs. I think they are two non comparable constructs.
Good task performance needs good communication. So we could train technically TBW in lab, but what about across context and spatial and temporal.
Another thing that puzzled me that that a narrower TBW window mapped to less local. Should it not be the other way eg: paper stressed on STS being critical for convergence of multisensory stimuli. So you would expect the local (STS) to be high.
Would enhanced local be at the expense of global processing.
Now for rest of paper
METHOD:
Hypothesis was that folks with more effective multisensory processing will exhibit higher distributed neural processing in a multisensory integration task. TBW was measured using an audiovisual SJ simultaneously judgement task. The TBW measured the ability of participants to distinguish fine discrepancies in timing between auditory beeps and visual flash stimuli. A second run of the task looked at mutual information and local entropy with EEG recordings and made use of PLS and PDS techniques.
Not clear as what comprises local entropy and mutual information Perhaps STS was the local area being looked at and any other are is mutual.
Also local entropy and mutual information are not an either-or constructs. I think they are two non comparable constructs.
Good task performance needs good communication. So we could train technically TBW in lab, but what about across context and spatial and temporal.
Another thing that puzzled me that that a narrower TBW window mapped to less local. Should it not be the other way eg: paper stressed on STS being critical for convergence of multisensory stimuli. So you would expect the local (STS) to be high.
Would enhanced local be at the expense of global processing.
METHOD:
Hypothesis was that folks with more effective multisensory processing will exhibit higher distributed neural processing in a multisensory integration task. TBW was measured using an audiovisual SJ simultaneously judgement task. The TBW measured the ability of participants to distinguish fine discrepancies in timing between auditory beeps and visual flash stimuli. A second run of the task looked at mutual information and local entropy with EEG recordings and made use of PLS and PDS techniques.
