Çoklu-duyumlu çağrışımsal öğrenmenin hareket algısını etkilemesiyle işlevsel ağlarda oluşan değişimler

Associative learning, the process by which an association between two stimuli or a behavior and a stimulus is learned, is one of today's exciting and important topics of neuroscience. The influence of multisensory associations on perceptual experience has revealed unexpected levels of sensory plasticity in the adult brain. By using an audiovisual association paradigm, we designed experiments to assess motion perception and BOLD activity under various associative learning con- ditions. Eleven subjects (3 males) participated in the audiovisual association training followed by resting state fMRI scans. Before and after the association training, random-dot motion with varying coherence values and static tones of distinct frequencies were presented. Subjects were required to indicate the direc- tion of random-dot motion. During the association phase, random-dots moving up or down with 100% coherence was paired with either high or low frequency static tone. The behavioral data showed that the perception of random-dot mo- tion with low coherence was significantly changed in favor of exposed audiovisual association. The analyses on resting state functional data indicated that identi- fied canonical networks (i.e., visual, auditory, sensory, motor, executive, memory, and default mode) did not differ significantly between pre- and post- associa- tion training, and inter-hemispheric coherence values between early stage visual motion areas were not increased. On the other hand, the connectivity strength between auditory and visual networks increased significantly after the acquired audiovisual association. Accordingly, these findings suggest that even brief as- sociation training can lead to changes in connectivity between low-level sensory areas.