PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ciro Ramos-Estebanez
AU  - Lotfi B. Merabet
AU  - Katsuyuki Machii
AU  - Felipe Fregni
AU  - Gregor Thut
AU  - Timothy A. Wagner
AU  - Vicenzo Romei
AU  - Amir Amedi
AU  - Alvaro Pascual-Leone
TI  - Visual Phosphene Perception Modulated by Subthreshold Crossmodal Sensory Stimulation
AID  - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5468-06.2007
DP  - 2007 Apr 11
TA  - The Journal of Neuroscience
PG  - 4178--4181
VI  - 27
IP  - 15
4099  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/15/4178.short
4100  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/15/4178.full
SO  - J. Neurosci.2007 Apr 11; 27
AB  - Crossmodal sensory interactions serve to integrate behaviorally relevant sensory stimuli. In this study, we investigated the effect of modulating crossmodal interactions between visual and somatosensory stimuli that in isolation do not reach perceptual awareness. When a subthreshold somatosensory stimulus was delivered within close spatiotemporal congruency to the expected site of perception of a phosphene, a subthreshold transcranial magnetic stimulation pulse delivered to the occipital cortex evoked a visual percept. The results suggest that under subthreshold conditions of visual and somatosensory stimulation, crossmodal interactions presented in a spatially and temporally specific manner can sum up to become behaviorally significant. These interactions may reflect an underlying anatomical connectivity and become further enhanced by attention modulation mechanisms.