How the brain controls decision making in a multisensory world

Christopher R. Fetsch, Uta Noppeney

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

Sensory systems evolved to provide the organism with information about the environment to guide adaptive behaviour. Neuroscientists and psychologists have traditionally considered each sense independently, a legacy of Aristotle and a natural consequence of their distinct physical and anatomical bases. However, from the point of view of the organism, perception and sensorimotor behaviour are fundamentally multi-modal; after all, each modality provides complementary information about the same world. Classic studies revealed much about where and how sensory signals are combined to improve performance, but these tended to treat multisensory integration as a static, passive, bottom-up process. It has become increasingly clear how this approach falls short, ignoring the interplay between perception and action, the temporal dynamics of the decision process and the many ways by which the brain can exert top-down control of integration. The goal of this issue is to highlight recent advances on these higher order aspects of multisensory processing, which together constitute a mainstay of our understanding of complex, natural behaviour and its neural basis. This article is part of the theme issue 'Decision and control processes in multisensory perception'.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number20220332
JournalPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume378
Issue number1886
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 25 2023

Keywords

  • multisensory integration, decision making, neuroscience, perception, metacognition, causal inference

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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