Towards multisensory awareness: Finding (neuronal) mechanisms that enable the detection and integration of audiovisual stimuli

In daily life our sensory systems continuously receive complex information from different sensory modalities, such as vision, audition or touch. To form unified and coherent percepts this information needs to be integrated across the various senses; a process called multisensory integration. Multisensory information stemming from natural environments, such as market places or busy roads, can be extremely diverse. Moreover limited processing capacities allow only a small subset of the complex sensory information to enter awareness. Hence, two main questions arise: Which are the (neuronal) mechanisms that enable sensory awareness? And is perceptual awareness necessary for multisensory integration to occur? During my PhD I used magnetoencephalography (MEG) and psychophysical measurements, trying to find some answers to these questions, which I will be presenting during this talk