This work builds on the enfacement effect. This effect occurs when experiencing a rhythmic stimulation on one's cheek while seeing someone else's face being touched in a synchronous way. This typically leads to cognitive and social-cognitive effects similar to self-other merging. In two studies, we demonstrate that this multisensory stimulation can change the evaluation of the other's face. In ...

Surrounded by multiple objects and events, receiving multisensory stimulation, our brain must sort through relevant and irrelevant multimodal signals to correctly decode and represent the information from the same and different objects and, respectively, events in the physical world. Over the last two decades, scientific interest has increased dramatically in how we integrate multisensory infor...

Bodily self-consciousness (BS) refers to self-knowledge like body shape, position and ownership. BS relies on the integration of multisensory bodily signals and can be experimentally manipulated with the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI). In this illusion, the incorporation of a rubber hand into the BS is facilitated by visual similarity to the participant’s hand. Neurophysiological research indicates...

Replacing the function of a missing or paralyzed limb with a prosthetic device that acts and feels like one's own limb is a major goal in applied neuroscience. Recent studies in nonhuman primates have shown that motor control and sensory feedback can be achieved by connecting sensors in a robotic arm to electrodes implanted in the brain. However, it remains unknown whether electrical brain stim...

Multisensory enhancement (MSE) is the augmentation of the response to sensory stimulation of one modality by stimulation of a different modality. It has been described for multisensory neurons in the deep superior colliculus (DSC) of mammals, which function to detect, and direct orienting movements toward, the sources of stimulation (targets). MSE would seem to improve the ability of DSC neuron...

Developmental vision is deemed to be necessary for the maturation of multisensory cortical circuits. Thus far, this has only been investigated in animal studies, which have shown that congenital visual deprivation markedly reduces the capability of neurons to integrate cross-modal inputs. The present study investigated the effect of transient congenital visual deprivation on the neural mechanis...

Functional neuroimaging studies have implicated a number of brain regions, especially the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), as being potentially important for visual-tactile multisensory integration. However, neuroimaging studies are correlational and do not prove the necessity of a region for the behavioral improvements that are the hallmark of multisensory integration. To remedy this knowledge...

It is well established that superior colliculus (SC) multisensory neurons integrate cues from different senses; however, the mechanisms responsible for producing multisensory responses are poorly understood. Previous studies have shown that spatially congruent cues from different modalities (e.g., auditory and visual) yield enhanced responses and that the greatest relative enhancements occur fo...