Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34793436›Full record

ArticlePLoS biology2021

Attention controls multisensory perception via two distinct mechanisms at different levels of the cortical hierarchy.

Ambra Ferrari, Uta Noppeney

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PLoS biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
16citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

16 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Late Cross-Modal Biases in Neural Spatial Representations Revealed by EEG Decoding.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026
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  11. The role of conflict processing in multisensory perception: behavioural and electroencephalography evidence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023
    Article
  12. Metacognition in the audiovisual McGurk illusion: perceptual and causal confidence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023
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  14. Crossmodal interactions in human learning and memory.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023
    Review
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Ambra FerrariComputational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics Centre, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom.ORCID 0000-0003-1946-3884
Uta NoppeneyComputational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics Centre, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

To form a percept of the multisensory world, the brain needs to integrate signals from common sources weighted by their reliabilities and segregate those from independent sources. Previously, we have shown that anterior parietal cortices combine sensory signals into representations that take into account the signals' causal structure (i.e., common versus independent sources) and their sensory reliabilities as predicted by Bayesian causal inference. The current study asks to what extent and how attentional mechanisms can actively control how sensory signals are combined for perceptual inference. In a pre- and postcueing paradigm, we presented observers with audiovisual signals at variable spatial disparities. Observers were precued to attend to auditory or visual modalities prior to stimulus presentation and postcued to report their perceived auditory or visual location. Combining psychophysics, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and Bayesian modelling, we demonstrate that the brain moulds multisensory inference via two distinct mechanisms. Prestimulus attention to vision enhances the reliability and influence of visual inputs on spatial representations in visual and posterior parietal cortices. Poststimulus report determines how parietal cortices flexibly combine sensory estimates into spatial representations consistent with Bayesian causal inference. Our results show that distinct neural mechanisms control how signals are combined for perceptual inference at different levels of the cortical hierarchy.

Indexed as

AdolescentAdultAttentionBayes TheoremCerebral CortexFemaleHumansMagnetic Resonance ImagingMaleMultivariate AnalysisOxygenSensationTime FactorsYoung AdultOxygen

Identifiers

PMID34793436
PMCPMC8639080

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.