Suppression of ventriloquism effect by transcranial random noise stimulation

• Published in: Transactions of Japanese Society for Medical and Biological Engineering Vol. Annual58; no. Abstract; p. 449
• Main Authors: Goto, Yujin, Aoyama, Atsushi, Hoshino, Takayuki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: Japanese Society for Medical and Biological Engineering 2020; 公益社団法人 日本生体医工学会
• ISSN: 1347-443X; 1881-4379
• DOI: 10.11239/jsmbe.Annual58.449

Ventriloquism effect is the illusion in which sound source localization is captured by concurrent visual information. Though recent studies suggest that audio-visual illusion is associated with cross-frequency coupling (CFC) at superior temporal area, the causal relationship between the ventriloquism effect and the CFC remains unclear. Here, we manipulated transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) to the superior temporal area of the participants, who were asked to indicate the direction of the perceived voice. The voice was presented from either of 21 speakers located from -30 to 30 degrees with/without the video of lip movement at 0 degree, where 0 degree indicates the front. During tRNS, the ventriloquism effect was reduced with the smaller localization error and standard deviation as compared with the sham condition. The results suggest that tRNS disturbs the CFC at the superior temporal area and that the ventriloquism effect is caused by the CFC.