Multisensory integration operates on correlated input from unimodal transients channels

Audiovisual information reaches the brain via both sustained and transient input channels, representing signals’ intensity over time or changes thereof, respectively. To date, it is unclear to what extent transient and sustained input channels contribute to the combined percept obtained through multisensory integration. Based on the results of two novel psychophysical experiments, here we demonstrate the importance of the transient (instead of the sustained) channel for the integration of audiovisual signals. To account for the present results, we developed a biologically-inspired, general-purpose model for multisensory integration, the Multisensory Correlation Detectors, which combines correlated input from unimodal transient channels. Besides accounting for the results of our psychophysical experiments, this model could quantitatively replicate several recent findings in multisensory research, as tested against a large collection of published datasets. In particular, the model could simultaneously account for the perceived timing of audiovisual events, multisensory facilitation in detection tasks, causality judgments, and optimal integration. All-in-all, this study demonstrates that several phenomena in multisensory research that were previously considered unrelated, all stem from the integration of correlated input from unimodal transient channels.