Sensory dominance and multisensory integration as screening tools in aging

Abstract

Multisensory information typically confers neural and behavioural advantages over unisensory information. We used a simple audio-visual detection task to compare healthy young (HY), healthy older (HO) and mild-cognitive impairment (MCI) individuals. Neuropsychological tests assessed individuals’ learning and memory impairments. First, we provide much-needed clarification regarding the presence of enhanced multisensory benefits in both healthily and abnormally aging individuals. The pattern of sensory dominance shifted with healthy and abnormal aging to favour a propensity of auditory-dominant behaviour (i.e., detecting sounds faster than flashes). Notably, multisensory benefits were larger only in healthy older than younger individuals who were also visually-dominant. Second, we demonstrate that the multisensory detection task offers benefits as a time- and resource-economic MCI screening tool. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis demonstrated that MCI diagnosis could be reliably achieved based on the combination of indices of multisensory integration together with indices of sensory dominance. Our findings showcase the importance of sensory profiles in determining multisensory benefits in healthy and abnormal aging. Crucially, our findings open an exciting possibility for multisensory detection tasks to be used as a cost-effective screening tool. These findings clarify relationships between multisensory and memory functions in aging, while offering new avenues for improved dementia diagnostics.

Neonatal Multisensory Processing in Preterm and Term Infants Predicts Sensory Reactivity and Internalizing Tendencies in Early Childhood

“…Finally, we tested for topographic differences using global dissimilarity and a non-parametric permutation test. In all analyses, effects were considered reliable if significant differences were observed for a minimum of 20 ms contiguously (Guthrie and Buchwald 1991 ; Murray et al 2018 ). For full-term infants there was no evidence of neural response differences between paired multisensory and summed unisensory conditions in either global field power or global dissimilarity.…”

Multiple Sensory Impairment Is Associated With Increased Risk of Dementia Among Black and White Older Adults

“…Another study found impairments among five senses (operationalized as global sensory impairment) predicted lower cognitive function but did not test for graded effects (17). Assessment of multiple types of sensory function may be a valuable tool for identifying older adults at high risk of poor health outcomes including cognitive decline (35). Future research should examine whether diagnostic and prognostic predictions for patients are improved by including multisensory assessments and whether interventions to prevent dementia could be targeted to those with multisensory impairment.…”

Processing moving visual scenes during upright stance in elderly patients with mild cognitive impairment

“…The MCI group's persistent postural destabilization after visual stimulation cessation may have been caused by their loss of ability to quickly downweigh the importance of visual information during postural stabilisation. This top-down inhibition of sensory information may be mediated by the cholinergic system, which is deficient in patients with subcortical vascular lesions associated with MCI (Murray et al, 2018;Liu et al, 2017). We also observed similar difficulties with downweighing visual information and fusing different sensory modalities when adaptation was needed in subjects with Parkinson's disease (PD), which is associated with subcortical cognitive impairment (Hwang et al, 2016).…”