We studied the responses to sensory stimulation in two diencephalic areas, the central posterior nucleus of the dorsal thalamus (CP) and the anterior tuberal nucleus of the hypothalamus (TA). In both the CP and the TA, units sensitive to acoustic (500-Hz sound), hydrodynamic (25-Hz dipole stimulus), and visual (640-nm light flash) stimuli were found. In the CP, most units were unimodal and resp...

Robust perception requires efficient integration of information from our various senses. Much recent electrophysiology points to neural areas responsive to multisensory stimulation, particularly audiovisual stimulation. However, psychophysical evidence for functional integration of audiovisual motion has been ambiguous. In this study we measure perception of an audiovisual form of biological mo...

Lateralized post-chiasmatic lesions of the primary visual pathway result in loss of visual perception in the field retinotopically corresponding to the damaged cortical area. However, patients with visual field defects have shown enhanced detection and localization of multisensory audio-visual pairs presented in the blind field. This preserved multisensory integrative ability (i.e., crossmodal ...

The suggestion has recently been made that certain higher-order cortical areas involved in supporting multisensory representations of the body, and of the space around it, might also play a role in controlling thermoregulatory functions. Here we demonstrate that temporary interference with the function of one of these areas, the posterior parietal cortex, by repetitive transcranial magnetic sti...

Interactive surfaces are promising to support multisensory stimulation during early development of children and for therapy for children with autism, as they offer a casual and engaging experience in a multisensory environment. In this paper, we present preliminary results of two field deployment studies of the use of BendableSound, a fabric-based interactive surfaces that allows children to pl...

Intracranial recordings from three human subjects provide the first direct electrophysiological evidence for audio-visual multisensory processing in the human superior parietal lobule (SPL). Auditory and visual sensory inputs project to the same highly localized region of the parietal cortex with auditory inputs arriving considerably earlier (30 ms) than visual inputs (75 ms). Multisensory inte...

Serious games can easily engage students, captivate and maintain their attention allowing them both learning with an adult, or on their own. But, teaching children with developmental disabilities like ASD, requires special set of tools and methods, due to decreased level of attention towards stimuli presented and lessened capability to learn in ways typical children do. Interactive multisensory...

Artificially reproducing smell sensations, without using chemical odorants, would change the future multisensory internet experiences. This article presents a computer-controlled reproduction technology proposed for stimulating human olfactory receptors, weak electric pulses. We developed concept prototype that can generate rectangular-shaped electrical pulses in different frequencies (0–30 kHz...

The effect of multisensory-induced changes on body-ownership and self-awareness using bodily illusions has been well established. More recently, experimental manipulation of bodily illusions have been combined with social cognition tasks to investigate whether changes in body-ownership can in turn change the way we perceive others. For example, experiencing ownership over a dark-skin rubber han...

Experimentally, the effects of environmental conditions upon human capabilities have been studied most often through the imposition of a single stressor in isolation. Although it seems to be a common belief that thermal comfort can be influenced by concomitant stimulation of non-tactile sensorial modalities, few studies have succeeded in delineating non-tactile stimulations, which interact with...