No effect of synesthetic congruency on temporal ventriloquism

A sound presented in temporal proximity to a light can alter the perceived temporal occurrence of that light (temporal ventriloquism). Recent studies have suggested that pitch–size synesthetic congruency (i.e., a natural association between the relative pitch of a sound and the relative size of a visual stimulus) might affect this phenomenon. To reexamine this, participants made temporal order judgements about small- and large-sized visual stimuli while high- or low-pitched tones were presented before the first and after the second light. We replicated a previous study showing that, at large sound–light intervals, sensitivity for visual temporal order was better for synesthetically congruent than for incongruent pairs. However, this congruency effect could not be attributed to temporal ventriloquism, since it disappeared at short sound–light intervals, if compared with a synchronous audiovisual baseline condition that excluded response biases. In addition, synesthetic congruency did not affect temporal ventriloquism even if participants were made explicitly aware of congruency before testing. Our results thus challenge the view that synesthetic congruency affects temporal ventriloquism

Alterations in vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP) phosphorylation: associations with asthmatic phenotype, airway inflammation and β(2)-agonist use

BACKGROUND: Vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP) mediates focal adhesion, actin filament binding and polymerization in a variety of cells, thereby inhibiting cell movement. Phosphorylation of VASP via cAMP and cGMP dependent protein kinases releases this "brake" on cell motility. Thus, phosphorylation of VASP may be necessary for epithelial cell repair of damage from allergen-induced inflammation. Two hypotheses were examined: (1) injury from segmental allergen challenge increases VASP phosphorylation in airway epithelium in asthmatic but not nonasthmatic normal subjects, (2) regular in vivo β(2)-agonist use increases VASP phosphorylation in asthmatic epithelium, altering cell adhesion. METHODS: Bronchial epithelium was obtained from asthmatic and non-asthmatic normal subjects before and after segmental allergen challenge, and after regularly inhaled albuterol, in three separate protocols. VASP phosphorylation was examined in Western blots of epithelial samples. DNA was obtained for β(2)-adrenergic receptor haplotype determination. RESULTS: Although VASP phosphorylation increased, it was not significantly greater after allergen challenge in asthmatics or normals. However, VASP phosphorylation in epithelium of nonasthmatic normal subjects was double that observed in asthmatic subjects, both at baseline and after challenge. Regularly inhaled albuterol significantly increased VASP phosphorylation in asthmatic subjects in both unchallenged and antigen challenged lung segment epithelium. There was also a significant increase in epithelial cells in the bronchoalveolar lavage of the unchallenged lung segment after regular inhalation of albuterol but not of placebo. The haplotypes of the β(2)-adrenergic receptor did not appear to associate with increased or decreased phosphorylation of VASP. CONCLUSION: Decreased VASP phosphorylation was observed in epithelial cells of asthmatics compared to nonasthmatic normals, despite response to β-agonist. The decreased phosphorylation does not appear to be associated with a particular β(2)-adrenergic receptor haplotype. The observed decrease in VASP phosphorylation suggests greater inhibition of actin reorganization which is necessary for altering attachment and migration required during epithelial repair

Auditory Displays for Take-Over in Semi-automated Vehicles

© 2018, Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature. With the field of automated vehicles rapidly growing comes the question of how we communicate to a driver that they need to take over in emergency or other urgent situations. Auditory displays can enhance communications between the driver and the automated vehicle. After a review of related literature, guidelines for audio displays were determined and a preliminary pilot experiment was conducted to further understand how drivers’ reaction time to urgent situations would vary based on the type of sound they were alerted with. Results suggest that speech may give the quickest response time and a word choice may matter if using a spearcon. This paper is expected to contribute to designing further research studies for take-over displays in the automated vehicle

Reversing the Colavita visual dominance effect

Many researchers have taken the Colavita effect to represent a paradigm case of visual dominance. Broadly defined, the effect occurs when people fail to respond to an auditory target if they also have to respond to a visual target presented at the same time. Previous studies have revealed the remarkable resilience of this effect to various manipulations. In fact, a reversal of the Colavita visual dominance effect (i.e., auditory dominance) has never been reported. Here, we present a series of experiments designed to investigate whether it is possible to reverse the Colavita effect when the target stimuli consist of repetitions embedded in simultaneously presented auditory and visual streams of stimuli. In line with previous findings, the Colavita effect was still observed for an immediate repetition task, but when an n-1 repetition detection task was used, a reversal of visual dominance was demonstrated. These results suggest that masking from intervening stimuli between n-1 repetition targets was responsible for the elimination and reversal of the Colavita visual dominance effect. They further suggest that varying the presence of a mask (pattern, conceptual, or absent) in the repetition detection task gives rise to different patterns of sensory dominance (i.e., visual dominance, an elimination of the Colavita effect, or even auditory dominance).SS-F was supported by grants SEJ 2007-64103/PSIC and CDS00012 from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, ERC StG 263145, and grant 2009SGR-292 from DURSI

Multisensory gain within and across hemispaces in simple and choice reaction time paradigms

Recent results on the nature and limits of multisensory enhancement are inconsistent when stimuli are presented across spatial regions. We presented visual, tactile and visuotactile stimuli to participants in two speeded response tasks. Each unisensory stimulus was presented to either the left or right hemispace, and multisensory stimuli were presented as either aligned (e.g. visual right/tactile right) or misaligned (e.g. visual right/tactile left). The first task was a simple reaction time (SRT) paradigm where participants responded to all stimulations irrespective of spatial position. Results showed that multisensory gain and coactivation were the same for spatially aligned and misaligned visuotactile stimulation. In the second task, a choice reaction time (CRT) paradigm where participants responded to right-sided stimuli only, misaligned stimuli yielded slower reaction times. No difference in multisensory gain was found between the SRT and CRT tasks for aligned stimulation. Overall, the results suggest that when spatial information is task-irrelevant, multisensory integration of spatially aligned and misaligned stimuli is equivalent. However, manipulating task requirements can alter this effect