Motor congruency and multisensory integration jointly facilitate visual information processing before movement execution

Abstract

Attention allows us to select important sensory information and enhances sensory information processing. Attention and our motor system are tightly coupled: attention is shifted to the target location before a goal-directed eye- or hand movement is executed. Congruent eye-hand movements to the same target can boost the effect of this pre-movement shift of attention. Moreover, visual information processing can be enhanced by, for example, auditory input presented in spatial and temporal proximity of visual input via multisensory integration (MSI). In this study, we investigated whether the combination of MSI and motor congruency can synergistically enhance visual information processing beyond what can be observed using motor congruency alone. Participants performed congruent eye- and hand movements during a 2-AFC visual discrimination task. The discrimination target was presented in the planning phase of the movements at the movement target location or a movement irrelevant location. Three conditions were compared: (1) a visual target without sound, (2) a visual target with sound spatially and temporally aligned (MSI) and (3) a visual target with sound temporally misaligned (no MSI). Performance was enhanced at the movement-relevant location when congruent motor actions and MSI coincide compared to the other conditions. Congruence in the motor system and MSI together therefore lead to enhanced sensory information processing beyond the effects of motor congruency alone, before a movement is executed. Such a synergy implies that the boost of attention previously observed for the independent factors is not at ceiling level, but can be increased even further when the right conditions are met.