Evidence for Enhanced Multisensory Facilitation with Stimulus Relevance: An Electrophysiological Investigation

Abstract

Currently debate exists relating to the interplay between multisensory processes and bottom-up and top-down influences. However, few studies have looked at neural responses to newly paired audiovisual stimuli that differ in their prescribed relevance. For such newly associated audiovisual stimuli, optimal facilitation of motor actions was observed only when both components of the audiovisual stimuli were targets. Relevant auditory stimuli were found to significantly increase the amplitudes of the event-related potentials at the occipital pole during the first 100 ms post-stimulus onset, though this early integration was not predictive of multisensory facilitation. Activity related to multise..