bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
It’s All about Tom And Jerry, Amr Khaled and  Iqra, Not Hamas’s Mickey Mouse: Palestinian Children’s Cultural Practices around the Television Set
Authors: Warshel Yael
Published: November 2012

Interest in the effect of martyrdom television programming on Palestinian children’s culture culminated in 2007, after Hamas’s Al-Aqsa television station tried to promote its political platform with the aid of a Mickey Mouse look-alike character in The Pioneers of Tomorrow. Critics of this television program assumed that martyrdom programs must have a major impact on Palestinian children. Although this assertion may seem reasonable, it is not supported by my research exploring how Palestinian children use television amidst a cultural context pervaded by ongoing conflict. My analysis reveals, among other important findings, that Palestinian children do not watch martyrdom programs. Thus, somewhat unexpectedly and contrary to concerns voiced about Palestinian martyrdom programming, Palestinian children have not been tuning in. Above all else, Palestinian children negotiate the available options by choosing to tune into global, rather than local Palestinian television content. The television program they consume the most is Tom and Jerry. Their parents, on the other hand, prefer that they watch religious programming, including that which airs on Iqra, and that which is hosted by modernist Muslim televangelist Amr Khaled. Nevertheless, family practices around the television set indicate, ultimately, that these children, not their parents, decide what to consume. My findings are based on survey analysis of Palestinian children’s television consumption decisions, surveys of their parents’ opinions about these decisions, my viewing of related television programs, and ethnographic analysis of related family practices around the television set. I conducted my analysis during a period of two and a half years with over 400 Palestinians in the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
On the Connection between Islamic Sacred Texts and Muslims’ Political Conduct: The Israeli Dominant Elites’ Conception
Authors: Aburaya Issam , Aburaya Issam , Abu-Raiya Hisham
Published: November 2012

This essay provides an empirically grounded and theoretically informed examination of Israeli elites’ discourse on Islam, in general, and its conceptualization of the relationship between Islamic sacred texts and the political conduct of Muslims, in particular. It argues that the Israeli elites’ discourse, for the most part, is not only unhistorical and lacking in a sociological basis, but, most importantly, emphasizes Islamic religious texts while reducing their Muslim readers into uniquely choiceless beings. This conceptualization, we contend, leads to unnecessary and unjustifiable theoretical inconsistencies concerning the broader topic of the relationship between human agency and religious texts. We conclude by suggesting that the above mentioned Israeli discourse teaches us less about what Islam and Muslims ‘really are’ than it does about the Israeli self-idealized image as members of a secular western society and the desires and anxieties this image expresses and represses.
An Exiled Filmmaker under House Arrest: Bahman Farmanara’s Smell of Camphor,  Fragrance of Jasmine
Authors: Holtmeier Matthew
Published: November 2012

Bahman Farmanara's career as a filmmaker in Iran provides a unique example of the effects of the revolution on filmmaking, because he was an established filmmaker before the revolution, continued making films until his exile during the revolution, and returned to Iran years later and began making films again. As a result, Farmanara has experienced a variety of different stages in the evolution of Iran's filmmaking environment. Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine, Farmanara's first film made after the revolution, attests to Farmanara's experiences with his exile and return home. In doing so it establishes rhizomatic group affiliations, the potential for the construction of an extra-national community.
“We are 100% Catholic”: Philippine Passion Rituals and Some Obstacles in the Study of Non-European Christianity
Authors: Bräunlein Peter J.
Published: November 2012

Philippine Catholicism is usually seen as a variant of a non-European Christianity, which was formerly introduced by Spanish missionaries and colonizers into the Philippine Archipelago. Philippine passion rituals, especially self-flagellation and rites of crucifixion, are commonly interpreted as bizarre phenomena of a pre-modern folk-religiosity or archaic survivals of ‘our’ past, or as a post-colonial mimicry of European religious history. The perspective on Philippine Christianity is always governed by European discourses, whether religious, scientific, or common sense. This paper is an attempt to question dichotomies such as ‘European’ and ‘non-European,’ ‘modern’ and ‘pre-modern,’ ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic,’ etc. In the study of religion such dichotomies, I argue, create problems of conceptualizing diversity within one religious tradition and behind such distinctions lurks the implicit self-perception of the West of being exemplary ‘modern.’ I use Philippine passion rituals as a hermeneutic challenge. Crucifixions are analyzed as media events and from the actor’s perspective, by historicizing the missionary encounter, and by scrutinizing concepts such as ‘syncretism’ and ‘identity.’ ‘Translation’ and the ‘histoire croisée’ approach are proposed as helpful analytical tools for the study of Christianity.
The cetoniine fauna of the Upper Guinean forests and savannas of Ghana (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae)
Authors: Mudge Alan D. , Orozco Jesús , Keith Philips T. , Antoine Philippe
Published: November 2012

The cetoniine fauna of Ghana (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae, excluding the tribes Valgini and Trichiini) is presented based on results from the Ghana Insect Project (GIP). Data from 1,571 specimens including the species and number found at each of 16 collecting sites, collecting methods, months collected, ‘common’ species and habitat associations are presented. The fauna now consists of 109 species in 51 genera. Previously known distributions and specimen label data are given for 31 species (including Genuchina, a subtribe of Cremastocheilini) recorded from Ghana for the first time.

Comparisons with the works of Endrödi (1973, 1976) and Joly (2001) are made and several misidentifications are annotated and corrected. GIP results suggest moist evergreen/semi-deciduous forest and Guinea savanna/semi-deciduous forest are species-rich habitats. Faunal lists for four protected areas (Ankasa Resource Reserve, Atewa Range Forest Reserve, Bia National Park and Mole National Park) sampled by both the GIP and Joly (2001, 2011) are presented.

PAST (Hammer et al., 2001) was used to estimate GIP inventory completeness through individual rarefaction. EstimateS (Colwell, 2009) was used to estimate total species richness using several classic nonparametric species richness estimators. Based on a data matrix of species abundances from each of the 16 GIP sites, the Chao 2 estimator stabilizes at ca. 113 taxa, and the jackknife 2 estimator at ca. 130 taxa. Richness estimates based on a broader, incidence-based matrix from all three sources GIP, Endrödi (1973, 1976) and Joly (2001, 2011) were: Chao 2 = 153, jackknife 1 = 157, jackknife 2 = 173. Additional sampling in under-sampled habitats such as wet and moist evergreen forest and Guinea savanna, and during the dry and early wet seasons should yield additional species.
Gender-Sensitive Protection and the Responsibility to Prevent: Lessons from Chad
Authors: Karlsrud John , Solhjell Randi
Published: November 2012

Helping states to fulfil their duty to protect their citizens and those seeking refuge within the sovereign terrain of the given state belongs to the second pillar of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The R2P concept, however, relates as much to preventing mass atrocities as to halt already on-going ones. This article emphasises the gender dimensions of prevention of and protection against violence and other threats, in order to stress the importance of implementing and mainstreaming gender into R2P. The case study of interest here is the UN support mission to Chad and the Central African Republic (MINURCAT) that provided a fairly encouraging, albeit short-lived, example of gender-responsive prevention and protection measures at the community level for refugees and IDPs in eastern Chad. Chad exemplifies a case with low-intensity conflicts and responses made at the local level, like the MINURCAT-supported community conflict resolution initiative, proved constructive in preventing violent responses. Here, deliberate integration of female police officers was a first step towards facilitating contact with women not allowed to talk to male strangers. Further, ensuring gender training for the entire police unit as an integrated part of their protection responsibility helped in avoiding male-as-norm approaches. The forced withdrawal of the UN was questioned as premature. However, the security situation has remained fairly stable, and the government seems able to provide at least some of the more hard-end forms of protection measures, although rule of law and other forms of protection for vulnerable groups remain elusive in eastern Chad.
Implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1325: Putting the Responsibility to Protect into Practice
Authors: Dharmapuri Sahana
Published: November 2012

Although the principle of the Responsibility to Protect has a number of supporters, there is still little agreement on institutional procedures to execute Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) systematically. This is due to a lack of consensus on how exactly to operationalize specific RtoP practices with regard to genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes. The acceptance of this line of thinking is peculiar in its ignorance of the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UN 1325) on Women, Peace and Security, by militaries, both national and multinational, over the last five to ten years. Misunderstanding, underutilization, and neglect of the UN 1325 mandate within the RtoP community has caused many important developments in the field to be overlooked. This article attempts to begin filling that gap. It presents an overview of what UN 1325 is about and compares UN 1325 to the Responsibility to Protect agenda. It also examines how implementing UN 1325 in UN and NATO peace and security operations is pushing the RtoP agenda forward in practical, not theoretical, terms in three key areas of military peace and security operations – the transformation of doctrine, command structure, and capabilities.
The Law and Policy Behind the Upcoming Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy
Authors: Markus Till , Salomon Markus
Published: November 2012

The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is one of the longest standing, most integrated, and at the same time one of the most criticised of the European Union’s policies. Despite continued efforts to improve the CFP, its failure to manage stocks at economically and environmentally sustainable levels continues to threaten the functioning and legitimacy of EU fisheries legislation. All branches of the CFP have recently been or are currently put under revision. In particular, in July 2011, the European Commission issued a reform package consisting of a proposal for new basic regulation, a reformed market organisation, and a discussion of perspectives on the EU’s external fisheries policies. This article uses the central failings of the CFP as reference points for inquiring into the potential of the reform proposals to improve EU fisheries governance. Pertinent political and legal aspects of the CFP are explained, analysed, and aligned with steps necessary to achieve sustainable fisheries management.
Supervisors of Small Worlds: The Role of Overseers on Colonial South Carolina Slave Plantations
Authors: Sandy Laura
Published: November 2012

The established historiography of slavery includes a substantial body of work on the colonial period, with particular emphasis upon the Atlantic slave trade and the development of the plantation system and the slave community embedded within it. However, one key element in the organization of plantations has received little attention: the overseers. Slave owners and slaves are well represented in documentary sources, yet overseers, despite their importance in the plantation system, remain shadowy figures in the story of slavery in the colonial era. Overseers were charged with the responsibility of supervising slave labor and maintaining the plantation owners’ human property. With a particular focus on the slave plantations of Henry Laurens, one of South Carolina's most successful and influential slave-owning entrepreneurs, this work explores the precise function of overseers within the colonial slave society of South Carolina. It will challenge the conventional image of overseers as poor, white, brutish task-masters, and show that in fact, only some of those in the occupation conformed to this crude stereotype. The role of overseer was vital to the day-to-day operation of slavery but it entailed neither absolute authority nor social standing. Analyzing recruitment patterns, overseers’ backgrounds, their daily role and activities, payment methods and rewards, their personal ambitions, employer-overseer-slave relations, and the prejudices men in this role faced, reveals much about those from the lower stratum of white society in colonial South Carolina. Using the often fragmentary evidence the overseer emerges from the shadows as a far more rounded and human figure than in the established historiography or popular culture. Many overseers proved hardworking, effective and prospered from their role on the plantation. This work not only reveals why many men became overseers despite the stigma attached to the job, but also sheds light on the complexities involved in slave ownership and ordering multi-racial plantation communities in the early American South.
Dissociable crossmodal recruitment of visual and auditory cortex for tactile perception
Authors: Yau Jeffrey M. , Celnik Pablo , Hsiao Steven S. , Desmond John E.
Published: November 2012

Primary sensory areas previously thought to be devoted to a single modality can exhibit multisensory responses. Some have interpreted these responses as evidence for crossmodal recruitment (i.e., primary sensory processing for inputs in a non-primary modality); however, the direct contribution of this activity to perception is unclear. We tested the specific contributions of visual and auditory cortex to tactile perception in healthy adult volunteers using anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). This form of non-invasive neuromodulation can enhance neural excitability and facilitate learning. In a series of psychophysical experiments we characterized participants’ ability to discriminate grating orientation or vibration frequency. We measured perceptual sensitivity before, during, and after tDCS application over either visual cortex or auditory cortex. Each participant received both anodal and sham interventions on separate sessions in counterbalanced order. We found that anodal stimulation over visual cortex selectively improved tactile spatial acuity, but not frequency sensitivity. Conversely, anodal stimulation over auditory cortex selectively improved tactile frequency sensitivity, but not spatial acuity. Furthermore, we found that improvements in tactile perception persisted after cessation of tDCS. These results reveal a clear double-dissociation in the crossmodal contributions of visual and auditory cortex to tactile perception, and support a supramodal brain organization scheme in which visual and auditory cortex comprise distributed networks that support shape and frequency perception, independent of sensory input modality.
Task dependent anatomical connections underlie multisensory processing
Authors: Brang David , Taich Zack , Hillyard Steven A. , Ramachandran Vilayanur S.
Published: November 2012

Our senses interact in daily life through multisensory integration, facilitating perceptual processes and behavioral responses. Numerous multisensory regions have been identified in humans and animals, raising the question of whether a single mechanism can support the dynamic range of experiences and behaviors multisensory processing engenders. The most common neural mechanisms proposed to underlie multisensory processing include anatomical connections directly linking early sensory areas, indirect connections to higher-order multisensory regions, and functional connectivity between cortical areas. Here we examine the relationship between white matter connectivity, as assessed with diffusion tensor imaging and individual differences in two divergent forms of multisensory processing: the redundant-target effect (RTE), in which subjects’ behavior is facilitated by congruent multisensory information, and the sound-induced illusory flash (SIIF) paradigm, in which incongruent multisensory information elicits a novel percept. Behavioral results demonstrated strong intra-subject reliability of the RTE and SIIF paradigms, but no correlation in performance between the two tasks. Consistent with this behavioral finding, we identified distinct anatomical networks underlying these two forms of multisensory processing. Using a whole-brain analysis and contrasting anatomical models of multisensory processing, increased behavioral performance on the RTE was associated with increased connectivity between the superior parietal lobe and early sensory regions. Conversely, increased incidence of illusion on the SIIF paradigm was associated with increased connectivity directly between early auditory and visual areas. These results implicate a broad network of anatomical connections involved in task-dependent multisensory processes.
Influence of visual cues on localization of acoustic sound sources in old adults
Authors: Freigang Claudia , Stoehr Marc , Schmiedchen Kristina , Bennemann Jan , Rübsamen Rudolf
Published: November 2012

Localization accuracy of stationary acoustic objects is reduced as people grow older. While it is known that this reduction can be caused by many age-related declines in the peripheral sensory system, at central cortical levels as well as in cognitive processes, it is not known how much localization performance is influenced by concurrent congruent and/or incongruent spatial information from a different sensory system, e.g., vision. In the present study we examined localization accuracy of young and old adults to acoustic stimuli that were presented simultaneously to a visual stimulus that was either spatially congruent or spatially disparate (by ±5°/±10°/±15°) in acoustic free field. The acoustic reference position was presented at frontal (9°), para-frontal (30°), and lateral (64°) positions. To infer how strongly the visual cue interacted with the auditory stimulus a unification task was examined. Here, acoustic and visual stimulus combinations were the same as in the localization task. Participants were instructed to indicate whenever both visual and acoustic information matched in terms of their spatial position. Localization accuracy was not influenced by the visual cue in young adults, but the influence of the visual distractor was strong in old adults, i.e., visual bias was strong. These observations were supported by the unification task where old adults had increased perception of congruent audio–visual directions at all reference positions and even at very large disparities (e.g., ±15°). Conclusively, concurrent information from different sensory systems highly influences auditory localization accuracy in older adults, supporting the notion that multisensory integration is enhanced in older adults.
Interactions between apparent motion rivalry in vision and touch
Authors: Conrad Verena , Vitello Marco Pino , Noppeney Uta
Published: November 2012

Introduction: In multistable perception, the brain alternates between several perceptual explanations of ambiguous sensory signals. Recent studies have demonstrated crossmodal interactions between ambiguous and unambiguous signals. However it is currently unknown whether multiple bistable processes can interact across the senses (Conrad et al., 2010; Pressnitzer and Hupe, 2006). Using the apparent motion quartet in vision and touch, this study investigated whether bistable perceptual processes for vision and touch are independent or influence each other when powerful cues of congruency are provided to facilitate visuotactile integration (Conrad et al., in press).

Methods: When two visual flashes and/or tactile vibration pulses are presented alternately along the two diagonals of the rectangle, subjects’ percept vacillates between vertical and horizontal apparent motion in the visual and/or tactile modalities (Carter et al., 2008). Observers were presented with unisensory (visual/tactile), visuotactile spatially congruent and incongruent apparent motion quartets and reported their visual or tactile percepts.

Results: Congruent stimulation induced pronounced visuotactile interactions as indicated by increased dominance times and %-bias for the percept already dominant under unisensory stimulation. Yet, the temporal dynamics did not converge for congruent stimulation. It depended also on subjects’ attentional focus and was generally slower for tactile than visual reports.

Conclusion: Our results support Bayesian approaches to perceptual inference, where the probability of a perceptual interpretation is determined by combining a modality-specific prior with incoming visual and/or tactile evidence. Under congruent stimulation, joint evidence from both senses decelerates the rivalry dynamics by stabilizing the more likely perceptual interpretation. Importantly, the perceptual stabilization was specific to spatiotemporally congruent visuotactile stimulation indicating multisensory rather than cognitive bias mechanisms.
Human temporal coordination of visual and auditory events in virtual reality
Authors: Kitazaki Michiteru
Published: November 2012

Since the speed of sound is much slower than light, we sometimes hear a sound later than an accompanying light event (e.g., thunder and lightning at a far distance). However, Sugita and Suzuki (2003) reported that our brain coordinates a sound and its accompanying light to be perceived simultaneously within 20 m distance. Thus, the light accompanied with physically delayed sound is perceived simultaneously with the sound in near field. We aimed to test if this sound–light coordination occurs in a virtual-reality environment and investigate effects of binocular disparity and motion parallax. Six naive participants observed visual stimuli on a 120-inch screen in a darkroom and heard auditory stimuli from a headphone. A ball was presented in a textured corridor and its distance from the participant was varied from 3–20 m. The ball changed to be in red before or after a short (10 ms) white noise (time difference: −120, −60, −30, 0, +30, +60, +120 ms), and participants judged temporal order of the color-change and the sound. We varied visual depth cues (binocular disparity and motion parallax) in the virtual-reality environment, and measured the physical delay at which visual and auditory events were perceived simultaneously. In terms of the results, we did not find sound–light coordination without binocular disparity or motion parallax, but found it with both cues. These results suggest that binocular disparity and motion parallax are effective for sound–light coordination in virtual-reality environment, and richness of depth cues are important for the coordination.
Perceptual calibration to delayed auditory feedback of self-body movement
Authors: Toida Koichi , Ueno Kanako , Shimada Sotaro
Published: November 2012

Temporal contingency between self-body movement and its auditory feedback is crucial to perceive external auditory events. The present study examined whether delay detection of self-generated sound is modulated by short-term exposure of delayed auditory feedback. A total of 36 healthy students participated in Experiment 1 (, age 21.4 ± 1.3 years, mean ± SD) and 2 (, age 20.8 ± 1.4 years). In both experiments, the subject pressed a button with their right index finger and judged whether the auditory feedback (full-range pulsed sound) delivered through a headphone was delayed or not, compared to the sensation of the finger movement. Auditory feedback delay was inserted by using a sound effector device (SPX2000, YAMAHA, Japan). The durations of auditory feedback delay were ranged from 118 to 352 ms at 33.3 ms intervals in Experiment 1, and from 19 to 253 ms in Experiment 2. To calculate the point of subjective equality (PSE), where the delay detection rate was 50%, we have fitted a logistic function to the delay detection probability curve for each subject. The results showed that PSEs were 209.0 and 137.5 ms in Experiment 1 and 2, respectively, which were significantly different (, ). This indicates that PSE was modulated by the range of the delay used in the experiment; PSE became longer as the delay lengthened. We suppose that the perceptual delay in auditory feedback of self-body movement is automatically calibrated to the frequently exposed duration between self-body movement and the auditory feedback.
Using audiovisual feedback during speaking
Authors: Chesters Jennifer , Möttönen Riikka
Published: November 2012

The sensory systems have an important role in speech production. Monitoring sensory consequences of articulatory movements supports fluent speaking. It is well known that delayed auditory feedback disrupts fluency of speech. Also, there is some evidence that immediate visual feedback, i.e., seeing one’s own articulatory movements in a mirror, decreases the disruptive effect of delayed auditory feedback (Jones and Striemer, 2007). It is unknown whether delayed visual feedback affects fluency of speech. Here, we aimed to investigate the effects of delayed auditory, visual and audiovisual feedback on speech fluency. 20 native English speakers (with no history of speech and language problems) participated in the experiment. Participants received delayed (200 ms) or immediate auditory feedback, whilst repeating sentences. Moreover, they received either no visual feedback, immediate visual feedback or delayed visual feedback (200, 400, 600 ms). Under delayed auditory feedback, the duration of sentences was longer and number of speech errors was greater than under immediate auditory feedback, confirming that delayed auditory feedback disrupts speech. Immediate visual feedback had no effect on speech fluency. Importantly, fluency of speech was most disrupted when both auditory and visual feedback was delayed, suggesting that delayed visual feedback strengthened the disruptive effect of delayed auditory feedback. However, delayed visual feedback combined with immediate auditory feedback had no effect on speech fluency. Our findings demonstrate that although visual feedback is not available during speaking in every-day life, it can be integrated with auditory feedback and influence fluency of speech.
The influence of time prediction on modality expectancy
Authors: Mühlberg Stefanie , Ruzzoli Manuela , Soto-Faraco Salvador
Published: November 2012

Predicting an upcoming event in time or modality leads to expectancy-based benefits for the predicted time point or modality and to costs for the unpredicted ones. Yet, it is not clear how expectancy to an event in time interacts with expectancy of a particular modality. In our study, participants had to perform a discrimination task (single or double pulse) on visual or tactile targets. An auditory cue (75% of validity) was used to increase expectancy in one or the other modality. We also manipulated the time point (1 or 3 s after the cue) in which the stimulus appeared in a probabilistic way. We found that increasing the temporal expectation reduced the reaction time of valid targets in both, vision and touch, but when the target was presented in the unexpected modality (invalid cue) time predictability induced a cost in reaction time. Therefore the benefit of time expectancy is converted into a cost if the stimulus is presented in the unattended modality, suggesting cross-modal competition in the temporal domain.
Simultaneous measurement of visual accommodation and convergence during 3D sickness
Authors: Takada Hiroki , Miyao Masaru
Published: November 2012

It is generally explained to the public that, ‘During stereoscopic vision, accommodation and convergence are mismatched and this is the main reason for the visual fatigue and the visually induced motion sickness caused by 3D’. The aim was to compare fixation distances between accommodation and convergence in young subjects while they viewed 3D video clips on a liquid crystal display (LCD). According to stabilometry and subjective items, we also analyzed the severity of motion sickness induced by viewing the above-mentioned 3D films. As results, statistical comparisons revealed that viewing the 3D film significantly affected body sway. Moreover, the accommodative power is similar to the distance of convergence without eyestrain in the phase component.
Visual stimuli within peripersonal space prioritize pain
Authors: De Paepe Annick , Legrain Valéry , Crombez Geert
Published: November 2012

Localizing pain not only requires a simple somatotopic representation of the body, but also knowledge about the limb position (i.e., proprioception), and a visual localization of the pain source in external space. Therefore, nociceptive events are remapped into a multimodal representation of the body and the space nearby (i.e., a peripersonal schema of the body). We investigated the influence of visual cues presented either in peripersonal, or in extrapersonal space on the localization of nociceptive stimuli in a temporal order judgement (TOJ) task. 24 psychology students made TOJs concerning which of two nociceptive stimuli (one applied to each hand) had been presented first (or last). A spatially non-predictive visual cue (i.e., lighting of a LED) preceded (80 ms) the nociceptive stimuli. This cue was presented randomly either on the hand of the participant (in peripersonal space), or 70 cm in front of the hand (in extrapersonal space), and either on the left or on the right side of space. Biases in spatial attention are reflected by the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS). The results revealed that TOJs were more biased towards the visual cue in peripersonal space in comparison with the visual cue in extrapersonal space. This study provides evidence for the crossmodal integration of visual and nociceptive stimuli in a peripersonal schema of the body. Future research with this paradigm will explore crossmodal attention deficits in chronic pain populations.
Heterogeneous auditory–visual integration: Effects of pitch, band-width and visual eccentricity
Authors: Thelen Antonia , Murray Micah M.
Published: November 2012

The identification of monosynaptic connections between primary cortices in non-human primates has recently been complemented by observations of early-latency and low-level non-linear interactions in brain responses in humans as well as observations of facilitative effects of multisensory stimuli on behavior/performance in both humans and monkeys. While there is some evidence in favor of causal links between early–latency interactions within low-level cortices and behavioral facilitation, it remains unknown if such effects are subserved by direct anatomical connections between primary cortices. In non-human primates, the above monosynaptic projections from primary auditory cortex terminate within peripheral visual field representations within primary visual cortex, suggestive of there being a potential bias for the integration of eccentric visual stimuli and pure tone (vs. broad-band) sounds. To date, behavioral effects in humans (and monkeys) have been observed after presenting (para)foveal stimuli with any of a range of auditory stimuli from pure tones to noise bursts. The present study aimed to identify any heterogeneity in the integration of auditory–visual stimuli. To this end, we employed a 3 × 3 within subject design that varied the visual eccentricity of an annulus (2.5°, 5.7°, 8.9°) and auditory pitch (250, 1000, 4000 Hz) of multisensory stimuli while subjects completed a simple detection task. We also varied the auditory bandwidth (pure tone vs. pink noise) across blocks of trials that a subject completed. To ensure attention to both modalities, multisensory stimuli were equi-probable with both unisensory visual and unisensory auditory trials that themselves varied along the abovementioned dimensions. Median reaction times for each stimulus condition as well as the percentage gain/loss of each multisensory condition vs. the best constituent unisensory condition were measured. The preliminary results reveal that multisensory interactions (as measured from simple reaction times) are indeed heterogeneous across the tested dimensions and may provide a means for delimiting the anatomo-functional substrates of behaviorally-relevant early–latency neural response interactions. Interestingly, preliminary results suggest selective interactions for visual stimuli when presented with broadband stimuli but not when presented with pure tones. More precisely, centrally presented visual stimuli show the greatest index of multisensory facilitation when coupled to a high pitch tone embedded in pink noise, while visual stimuli presented at approximately 5.7° of visual angle show the greatest slowing of reaction times.
Human sounds facilitates conscious processing of emotional faces
Authors: Stienen Bernard M. C. , Newell Fiona N.
Published: November 2012

The interaction of audio–visual signals transferring information about the emotional state of others may play a significant role in social engagement. There is ample evidence that recognition of visual emotional information does not necessarily depend on conscious processing. However, little is known about how multisensory integration of affective signals relates to visual awareness. Previous research using masking experiments has shown relative independence of audio–visual integration on visual awareness. However, masking does not capture the dynamic nature of consciousness in which dynamic stimulus selection depends on a multitude of signals. Therefore, we presented neutral and happy faces in one eye and houses in the other resulting in perceptual rivalry between the two stimuli while at the same time we presented laughing, coughing or no sound. The participants were asked to report when they saw the faces, houses or their mixtures and were instructed to ignore the playback of sounds. When happy facial expressions were shown participants reported seeing fewer houses in comparison to when neutral expressions were shown. In addition, human sounds increase the viewing time of faces in comparison when there was no sound. Taken together, emotional expressions of the face affect which face is selected for visual awareness and at the same time, this is facilitated by human sounds.
Natural scenes have matched amplitude-modulated sounds that systematically influence visual scanning
Authors: Grabowecky Marcia , Sherman Aleksandra , Suzuki Satoru
Published: November 2012

We have previously demonstrated a linear perceptual relationship between auditory amplitude-modulation (AM) rate and visual spatial-frequency using gabors as the visual stimuli. Can this frequency-based auditory–visual association influence perception of natural scenes? Participants consistently matched specific auditory AM rates to diverse visual scenes (nature, urban, and indoor). A correlation analysis indicated that higher subjective density ratings were associated with faster AM-rate matches. Furthermore, both the density ratings and AM-rate matches were relatively scale invariant, suggesting that the underlying crossmodal association is between visual coding of object-based density and auditory coding of AM rate. Based on these results, we hypothesized that concurrently presented fast (7 Hz) or slow (2 Hz) AM-rates might influence how visual attention is allocated to dense or sparse regions within a scene. We tested this hypothesis by monitoring eye movements while participants examined scenes for a subsequent memory task. To determine whether fast or slow sounds guided eye movements to specific spatial frequencies, we computed the maximum contrast energy at each fixation across 12 spatial frequency bands ranging from 0.06–10.16 cycles/degree. We found that the fast sound significantly guided eye movements toward regions of high spatial frequency, whereas the slow sound guided eye movements away from regions of high spatial frequency. This suggests that faster sounds may promote a local scene scanning strategy, acting as a ‘filter’ to individuate objects within dense regions. Our results suggest that auditory AM rate and visual object density are crossmodally associated, and that this association can modulate visual inspection of scenes.
Haptic object recognition is influenced by the orientation of the body relative to gravity
Authors: Barnett-Cowan Michael , Culham Jody C. , Snow Jacqueline C.
Published: November 2012

The orientation at which objects are most easily recognized — the perceptual upright (PU) — is influenced by body orientation with respect to gravity. To date, the influence of these cues on object recognition has only been measured within the visual system. Here we investigate whether objects explored through touch alone are similarly influenced by body and gravitational information. Using the Oriented CHAracter Recognition Test (OCHART) adapted for haptics, blindfolded right-handed observers indicated whether the symbol ‘p’ presented in various orientations was the letter ‘p’ or ‘d’ following active touch. The average of ‘p-to-d’ and ‘d-to-p’ transitions was taken as the haptic PU. Sensory information was manipulated by positioning observers in different orientations relative to gravity with the head, body, and hand aligned. Results show that haptic object recognition is equally influenced by body and gravitational references frames, but with a constant leftward bias. This leftward bias in the haptic PU resembles leftward biases reported for visual object recognition. The influence of body orientation and gravity on the haptic PU was well predicted by an equally weighted vectorial sum of the directions indicated by these cues. Our results demonstrate that information from different reference frames influence the perceptual upright in haptic object recognition. Taken together with similar investigations in vision, our findings suggest that reliance on body and gravitational frames of reference helps maintain optimal object recognition. Equally relying on body and gravitational information may facilitate haptic exploration with an upright posture, while compensating for poor vestibular sensitivity when tilted.
How to combine direction cues optimally
Authors: Murray Richard F. , Morgenstern Yaniv , Harris Laurence R.
Published: November 2012

Many perceptual tasks require estimating a direction in space. Often several directional cues are available, such visual and gravitational cues to the subjective vertical, or visual and auditory cues to the direction of an object. In work on the subjective vertical, researchers have developed a heuristic vector summation model that has no deep theoretical motivation, but that accounts well for the direction and reliability of observers’ direction estimates when multiple cues are available, and that can accommodate directional cues ranging over all possible directions (Mittelstaedt, 1983). In work on combining visual and auditory cues to direction, researchers have used statistically motivated cue combination models that were originally developed for linear quantities such as depth, not circular or spherical quantities such as direction, and hence work only over a limited range of cue directions (Alais and Burr, 2004). Here we present a new model of directional cue combination that combines the advantages of both previous approaches. We develop a statistical theory of cue combination based on the von Mises distribution, the analog on the circle of the normal distribution on the line. We show that this theory differs in important ways from the theory of linear cue combination, e.g., a combined direction estimate can be less certain than any of the individual cues that were used to calculate it. We also show that the vector summation model developed empirically by previous investigators is an excellent approximation to our theory, meaning that it is a nearly optimal way of combining directional cues.
Brain areas involved in echolocation motion processing in blind echolocation experts
Authors: Thaler Lore , Milne Jennifer , Arnott Stephen R. , Goodale Melvyn A.
Published: November 2012

People can echolocate their distal environment by making mouth-clicks and listening to the click-echoes. In previous work that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we have shown that the processing of echolocation motion increases activity in posterior/inferior temporal cortex (Thaler et al., 2011). In the current study we investigated, if brain areas that are sensitive to echolocation motion in blind echolocation experts correspond to visual motion area MT+. To this end we used fMRI to measure brain activity of two early blind echolocation experts while they listened to recordings of echolocation and auditory source sounds that could be either moving or stationary, and that could be located either to the left or to the right of the listener. A whole brain analysis revealed that echo motion and source motion activated different brain areas in posterior/inferior temporal cortex. Furthermore, the relative spatial arrangement of echo and source motion areas appeared to match the relative spatial arrangement of area MT+ and source motion areas that has been reported for sighted people (Saenz et al., 2008). Furthermore, we found that brain areas that were sensitive to echolocation motion showed a larger response to echo motion presented in contra-lateral space, a response pattern typical for visual motion processing in area MT+. In their entirety the data are consistent with the idea that brain areas that process echolocation motion in blind echolocation experts correspond to area MT+.
Influence of selective attention to sound in multisensory integration
Authors: Morís Fernández Luis , Visser Maya , Soto-Faraco Salvador
Published: November 2012

We assessed the role of audiovisual integration in selective attention by testing selective attention to sound. Participants were asked to focus on one audio speech stream out of two audio streams presented simultaneously at different pitch. We measured recall of words from the cued or the uncued sentence using a 2AFC at the end of each trial. A video-clip of the mouth of a speaker was presented in the middle of the display, matching one of the two simultaneous auditory streams (50% of the time it matched the cued sentence and the rest the uncued one). In Experiment 1 the cue was 75% valid. Recall in the valid trials was better than in the invalid ones. The critical result was, however, that only in the valid condition we did find differences between audio–visual matching and audio-visually mismatching sentences. On the invalid condition these differences were not found. In Experiment 2 the cue to the relevant sentence was 100% valid, and we included a control condition where the lips didn’t match either of the sentences. When the lips matched the cued sentence performance was better than when they matched the uncued sentence or none of them, suggesting a benefit of audiovisual matching rather than a cost of mismatch. Our results indicate that attention to acoustic frequency (pitch) plays an important role in what sounds benefit from multisensory integration.
Inter-hemispheric interaction of touches at the fingers: A combined psychophysics and TMS approach
Authors: Tamè Luigi , Johnstone Tom , Holmes Nicholas P.
Published: November 2012

Many studies have investigated interactions in the processing of tactile stimuli across different fingers. However, the precise time-scale of these interactions when stimuli arrive on opposite sides of the body remains uncertain. Specifically, it is not clear how tactile stimulation of different fingers of the same and different hands can interact with each other. The aim of the present study was to address this issue using a novel approach combining the QUEST threshold estimation method with single pulse TMS (spTMS). First, QUEST was used in a two-interval forced-choice design in order to establish threshold for detecting a 200 ms, 100 Hz sinusoidal vibration applied to the index fingertip (target finger threshold). This was done either when the target was presented in isolation, or concurrently with a distractor stimulus on another finger of the same or a different hand. Second, the same participants underwent a series of MRI scans (localisers) to produce somatotopic maps of SI and SII cortices. These maps were used to stimulate over SI with spTMS during a subsequent behavioural task, with the aim of modulating the behavioural interactions between the different fingers. The results showed that the threshold for detecting the target was lower when it was presented in isolation, as compared to when a concurrent distractor was present. Moreover, detection thresholds varied as a function of the distractor finger stimulated. The differential effect of the distractor finger on target detection thresholds is consistent with the segregation of different fingers in early somatosensory processing, from the periphery to SI.
Investigations into visually-induced somatic amplification
Authors: McKenzie Kirsten J. , Poliakoff Ellen , Puntis Stephen , Lawrence Adam , Brown Richard J. , Lloyd Donna M.
Published: November 2012

Studies into tactile detection have found that a simultaneous light stimulus affects judgments of the presence or absence of a near threshold tactile stimulus, leading to higher numbers of false alarms, whereby participants report feeling a touch in the absence of a stimulus, as well as modest improvements in tactile sensitivity (Lloydet al., 2008; McKenzieet al., 2010, 2012). Anecdotally, the reported intensity of the bi-modal stimuli was also enhanced — an effect that was investigated in the current studies. In Experiment 1 participants discriminated between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ tactile stimuli, which were accompanied by a light flash on 50% of trials. We observed a bias towards classifying light-present vibrations as ‘strong’ regardless of signal strength, as well as some evidence for improved accuracy in discrimination. In Experiment 2, participants gave a subjective intensity rating on a 6-point scale, which showed an increase in magnitude ratings for both ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ vibrotactile stimuli when the light was present. This shows that a simultaneous light can both improve tactile discrimination and lead to both types of tactile stimulus being rated as stronger. Primary somatosensory cortex may underlie these effects, as it receives direct projections from visual cortex and indirect projections from association areas of the brain. However, it is as yet unclear whether or not these effects are due to the same underlying mechanism, or at which processing stage they occur. Therefore, we are currently exploring the neural underpinnings of this amplification effect using both fMRI and EEG.