Integration of auditory information in the cat's visual cortex

Multisensory anatomical pathways

“…These recent results were highly complementary to the pioneer works of Schroeder's laboratory that have revealed the multimodal feature of the monkey auditory belt where both visual and somatosensory responses can be evoked (Schroeder et al, 2001;Schroeder and Foxe, 2002;Fu et al, 2003). In the carnivore, while previous studies have reported that the visual cortex can be activated by auditory stimuli (Spinelli et al, 1968;Morrell, 1972;Fishman and Michael, 1973), intracellular recording in the primary visual cortex (A17) have recently failed to find such auditory responses (Sanchez-Vives et al, 2006). Consequently, because no evidence of auditory or visuo-auditory activity was reported at the single cell level in the awake monkey and to investigate the role of the A1 to V1 projection described in the macaque, we performed an electrophysiological study of the effect of an auditory stimulus on the neuronal activity of area V1 in a behaving monkey performing an oculomotor task (Wang et al, 2008).…”

Transcranial magnetic stimulation of the visual cortex induces somatotopically organized qualia in blind subjects

“…Single-unit recordings in the visual cortex in unanesthetized cats have shown that neurons in areas 17 and 18 receive both visual and auditory input. For many of these bimodal cells, receptive fields in the acoustic and visual domains overlapped spatially (32). Anatomical tracing studies have further shown that there are direct projections from the auditory cortex and from the polysensory area of the temporal lobe to area 17 of the macaque monkey (26).…”

Visual facilitation of auditory localization in schoolchildren: A signal detection analysis

“…Given a single auditory-visual space, the child simply has to learn to accurately align his eyes with the auditory target, and there is evidence from Wertheimer's (1961) Allan, 1969, for comparable reports on the facilitation of visual perception by movement.) Fishman and Michael (1973) have shown that there are cells in the so-called visual cortex of the cat which have coincident acoustic and visual receptive fields. They argue that such cells could playa part in the spatial localization of both auditory and visual stimuli.…”