TY  - JOUR
N2  - Behaviourally, humans have been shown to integrate multisensory information in a statistically-optimal fashion by averaging the individual unisensory estimates according to their relative reliabilities. This form of integration is optimal in that it yields the most reliable (i.e. least variable) multisensory percept. The present study investigates the neural mechanisms underlying integration of visual and tactile shape information at the macroscopic scale of the regional {BOLD} response. Observers discriminated the shapes of ellipses that were presented bimodally (visual?tactile) or visually alone. A 2 × 5 factorial design manipulated (i) the presence vs. absence of tactile shape information and (ii) the reliability of the visual shape information (five levels). We then investigated whether regional activations underlying tactile shape discrimination depended on the reliability of visual shape. Indeed, in primary somatosensory cortices (bilateral BA2) and the superior parietal lobe the responses to tactile shape input were increased when the reliability of visual shape information was reduced. Conversely, tactile inputs suppressed visual activations in the right posterior fusiform gyrus, when the visual signal was blurred and unreliable. Somatosensory and visual cortices may sustain integration of visual and tactile shape information either via direct connections from visual areas or top-down effects from higher order parietal areas.
JF  - NeuroImage
SN  - 1053-8119
Y1  - 2012///
TI  - The neural mechanisms of reliability weighted integration of shape information from vision and touch
ID  - eprints2915
AV  - none
KW  - Vision
KW  -  Touch
KW  -  Multisensory integration
KW  -  Maximum Likelihood Estimation
KW  -  Shape
KW  -  fMRI
KW  -  Postcentral sulcus
IS  - 2
UR  - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811911011475
PB  - Elsevier
VL  - 60
EP  -  1072
A1  - Helbig, Hannah B.
A1  - Ernst, Marc O.
A1  - Ricciardi, Emiliano
A1  - Pietrini, Pietro
A1  - Thielscher, Axel
A1  - Mayer, Katja M.
A1  - Schultz, Johannes
A1  - Noppeney, Uta
SP  - 1063 
ER  -