ubiquitous crossmodal stochastic resonance in humans auditory noise facilitates tactile, visual and proprioceptive sensations无处不在的交叉随机共振在人类听觉噪声促进触觉、视觉和本体感觉.pdfVIP

Ubiquitous Crossmodal Stochastic Resonance in Humans: Auditory Noise Facilitates Tactile, Visual and Proprioceptive Sensations Eduardo Lugo, Rafael Doti, Jocelyn Faubert* Visual Psychophysics and Perception Laboratory, School of Optometry, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Abstract Background: Stochastic resonance is a nonlinear phenomenon whereby the addition of noise can improve the detection of weak stimuli. An optimal amount of added noise results in the maximum enhancement, whereas further increases in noise intensity only degrade detection or information content. The phenomenon does not occur in linear systems, where the addition of noise to either the system or the stimulus only degrades the signal quality. Stochastic Resonance (SR) has been extensively studied in different physical systems. It has been extended to human sensory systems where it can be classified as unimodal, central, behavioral and recently crossmodal. However what has not been explored is the extension of this crossmodal SR in humans. For instance, if under the same auditory noise conditions the crossmodal SR persists among different sensory systems. Methodology/Principal Findings: Using physiological and psychophysical techniques we demonstrate that the same auditory noise can enhance the sensitivity of tactile, visual and propioceptive system responses to weak signals. Specifically, we show that the effective auditory noise significantly increased tactile sensations of the finger, decreased luminance and contrast visual thresholds and significantly changed EMG recordings of the leg muscles during posture maintenance. Conclusions/Significance: We conclude that crossmodal SR is a ubiquitous phenomenon in humans that can be interpreted within an energy and frequency model of multisensory neurons spontaneous activity. Initial