Neuroscientists at University of California - San Diego in the US mapped brain areas that integrate the sight and touch of a looming object and aid in their understanding of the perceptual and neural mechanisms of multisensory integration.
The device can be synchronised with entertainment content, such as movies, music, games and virtual reality, to deliver immersive multisensory effects near the face and enhance the sense of presence.
"We perceive and interact with the world around us through multiple senses in daily life," said Ruey-Song Huang, neuroscientist at UC San Diego.
"To detect and avoid impending threats, it is essential to integrate and analyse multisensory looming signals across space and time and to determine whether they originate from the same sources," Huang said.
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When the onset of ball movement and the onset of an air puff were nearly simultaneous (with a delay of 100 milliseconds), the air puff was perceived as completely out of sync with the looming ball.
In experiments using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, the scientists delivered tactile-only, visual-only, tactile-visual out-of-sync, and tactile-visual in-sync stimuli to either side of the subject's face in randomised events.
More than a dozen of brain areas were found to respond more strongly to lateralised multisensory stimuli than to lateralised unisensory stimuli, and the response was further enhanced when the multisensory stimuli are in perceptual sync.
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