Cross modal attention through the three sensory modalities in human adults: an EEG study

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 16, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Helene Vitali^1,2 (helene.vitali@iit.it), Alice Bollini¹, Claudio Campus¹, Monica Gori¹; ¹UVIP, Italian Institute of Technology, ²DIBRIS, University of Genova

Some studies showed that cross-modal stimuli in an oddball task can be influenced by the context (sense of standard stimuli). However, only a pair of sensory stimuli was usually investigated, while all the modalities have never been systematically compared. Here, for the first time, we tested whether a difference exists between the sensory modalities in capturing attention in a cross-modal context. Therefore, we implemented an audio-tactile, audio-visual, and visuo-tactile oddball paradigm. Each bi-sensory task consisted of 70% standard, 10% same-sense oddball, 10% cross-modal oddball, and 10% multisensory oddball stimuli in 15 participants. Each task had at least one standard stimulus before every oddball stimulus. EEG data were recorded with 64 active scalp electrodes. Our results showed a significant effect of the cross-modal oddball when we compared it with the same-sense oddball on P300 event-related potentials (ERP) for each task considered. Moreover, changes also in the earlier attentive ERP components were found when we considered the same cross-modal audio or tactile oddball with a different sensory standard, tactile or visual in the first, and audio or visual in the second. Specifically, standard visual stimuli seem to higher modulate the cross-modal oddball response. In conclusion, cross-modal stimulation evoked a greater attentional activation compared with the same modality. Furthermore, audio and tactile cross-modal stimuli can be influenced by context, particularly the standard visual stimuli. This suggests that vision is the predominant sense and can modulate attention towards other sensory modalities. This work is funded by EU H2020, ERC StG' MySpace, Grant Agreement No.948349.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Multisensory