Khandhadia, Amit;
(2024)
Combining Sensory Information in the Mammalian Temporal Lobe: Approaching realism in audiovisual integration, spatial perception, and comparative neurophysiology.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The temporal lobe of the mammalian brain receives and processes information from the visual and auditory system. In primates, the inferior temporal lobe is particularly important for the processing of high-level visual form information including regions, which respond specifically to faces, termed face patches. However, some of these face patches sit in the superior temporal sulcus (STS), which is a zone of convergence for different kinds of visual and auditory afferent connections. Similarly, visual regions near the auditory cortex in ferrets also contain widespread connections to different kinds of auditory and visual regions. This thesis aims to investigate and further understand the convergence of these sensory inputs and how single neurons in the temporal lobe can combine auditory, visual, social, and spatial information. Following a table of contents in chapter 1, chapter 2 reviews the literature exploring functions that the temporal cortex subserves across both primates and carnivores including form-based vision, 3D vision, audiovisual integration, and the potential combination of these functions. Chapter 3 describes experiments, which discovered, for the first time, that neurons in an STS face patch showed acoustic modulation of visual signals and even responses to auditory stimulus alone. Chapter 4 focuses on visual processing, which revealed that neurons in the same face patch were tuned not to retinal angle but the physical size of a face, indicating that spatial information combines with form visual information in this region. Chapter 5 combines these two approaches to examine how spatial manipulations influence the audiovisual responses in this region. Chapter 6 then takes a comparative approach detailing experiments that uncovered face and body selective neurons in ferret visual regions. Finally, chapter 7 synthesize these results and details future experiments that further explore the relationship of audiovisual integration and space as well the comparative functions of the temporal lobe.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Combining Sensory Information in the Mammalian Temporal Lobe: Approaching realism in audiovisual integration, spatial perception, and comparative neurophysiology |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > The Ear Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10191224 |
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