Spatial Characteristics of Visual-auditory Summation in Human Saccades

Bimodal (auditory + visual) stimuli reduce saccade latencies in human observers to a degree that exceeds levels predictable by probabilistic summation between parallel, independent unimodal pathways. These interactions have been interpreted in terms of converging visual and auditory afferents within the oculomotor pathways, specifically within the superior colliculus (SC). The present work describes the spatial tuning of auditory-visual summation in human saccades, using diagnostics derived from stochastic models of information processing. Consistent with expectations based on the electrophysiology of the SC, the magnitude of facilitation varied with the degree of spatial correspondence, and the spatial tuning was quite coarse.