TY - JOUR T1 - Multisensory Integration Shortens Physiological Response Latencies JF - The Journal of Neuroscience JO - J. Neurosci. SP - 5879 LP - 5884 DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4986-06.2007 VL - 27 IS - 22 AU - Benjamin A. Rowland AU - Stephan Quessy AU - Terrence R. Stanford AU - Barry E. Stein Y1 - 2007/05/30 UR - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/22/5879.abstract N2 - Individual superior colliculus (SC) neurons integrate information from multiple sensory sources to enhance their physiological response. The response of an SC neuron to a cross-modal stimulus combination can not only exceed the best component unisensory response but can also exceed their arithmetic sum (i.e., superadditivity). The present experiments were designed to investigate the temporal profile of multisensory integration in this model system. We found that cross-modal stimuli frequently shortened physiological response latencies (mean shift, 6.2 ms) and that response enhancement was greatest in the initial phase of the response (the phenomenon of initial response enhancement). The vast majority of the responses studied evidenced superadditive computations, most often at the beginning of the multisensory response. ER -