From Multiple Senses to Perceptual Awareness

Throughout the day, our senses provide us with a rich stream of information about the environment: We see colours and shapes, hear music or smell food. With seemingly no effort, the human brain integrates these signals to create a conscious sensory experience of the external world. Yet, this sensory experience is not a truthful representation of the physical world. Instead, it is crucially shaped by a variety of processes, two of which are the focus of the current work: multisensory integration and awareness. Yet, in contrast to their impact, relatively little is known about the mechanisms that enable perceptual awareness within a multisensory world. For example, does multisensory integration occur automatically or are higher order cognitive processes (such as awareness) necessary to bind the information? And where does awareness emerge within the human brain? The current work describes three experimental studies, which were designed to provide further insights into auditory and visual perception and the human brain.