Elsevier

Neuroscience Letters

Volume 380, Issues 1–2, 20–27 May 2005, Pages 155-160
Neuroscience Letters

Maximum Likelihood Integration of rapid flashes and beeps

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2005.01.030Get rights and content

Abstract

Maximum likelihood models of multisensory integration are theoretically attractive because the goals and assumptions of sensory information processing are explicitly stated in such optimal models. When subjects perceive stimuli categorically, as opposed to on a continuous scale, Maximum Likelihood Integration (MLI) can occur before or after categorization—early or late. We introduce early MLI and apply it to the audiovisual perception of rapid beeps and flashes. We compare it to late MLI and show that early MLI is a better fitting and more parsimonious model. We also show that early MLI is better able to account for the effects of information reliability, modality appropriateness and intermodal attention which affect multisensory perception.

Section snippets

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Dr. Aki Vehtari, Dr. Rolf P. Würtz and Mr. Bram Bolder for useful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

References (21)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (28)

  • Multisensory integration in hemianopia and unilateral spatial neglect: Evidence from the sound induced flash illusion

    2016, Neuropsychologia
    Citation Excerpt :

    The present neuropsychological findings from brain-damaged patients converge with behavioral, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological evidence, indicating that different neural mechanisms underlie these illusions (Andersen et al., 2004; Innes-Brown and Crewther, 2009; Shams et al., 2000; Mishra et al., 2008; Watkins et al., 2007). At the behavioral level, in healthy participants, the fusion illusion seems overall less reliable and weaker than the fission illusion, and more vulnerable to inter-individual variability (Shams et al., 2000; Andersen et al., 2004, 2005; Mishra et al., 2008; Innes-Brown and Crewther, 2009); we also did not find evidence for a correlation between the two illusions in both healthy (old and young) individuals and in brain-damaged patients. Moreover, aging seems to differently influence the perception of ‘fission’ and ‘fusion’ illusions: a larger susceptibility to fission effects, as compared with fusion effects, was recently described in older participant (over 65 years, and of an average age comparable to that of our healthy participants), as compared with younger adults (18–30 years) (McGovern et al., 2014; DeLoss and Andersen, 2015).

  • Synesthetes show normal sound-induced flash fission and fusion illusions

    2014, Vision Research
    Citation Excerpt :

    While more detailed work needs to be done to illuminate the extent to which age directly influences multisensory integration in the SIFFI conditions in normal populations, there does appear to be some convergence in the literature on this issue. While effects are reliably found in the fission illusion, they are not so forthcoming in the fusion illusion, with researchers achieving variable results, some obtaining the illusion (Andersen, Tiippana, & Sams, 2005; Mishra, Martinez, & Hillyard, 2008; Shams et al., 2005) and some not achieving the illusion at all (Innes-Brown & Crewther, 2009). In fact the original paper reporting these illusions also did not find a fusion effect (Shams, Kamitani, & Shimojo, 2000).

  • Audiovisual influences on the perception of visual apparent motion: Exploring the effect of a single sound

    2008, Acta Psychologica
    Citation Excerpt :

    Such an interaction has been shown for a related phenomenon in which two light flashes presented together with a single beep are often perceived as one single flash (Andersen, Tiippana, & Sams, 2004). Electrophysiological recordings and maximum likelihood modelling of such fusion and complementary fission illusions indicated an early interaction of auditory and visual processes (Andersen, Tiippana, & Sams, 2005; Shams, Kamitani, Thompson, & Shimojo, 2001). Similarly, the sound in this study could have facilitated perceptual fusion of the two light flashes into a single moving object.

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text