ShortCut: What does the McGurk effect demonstrate about multisensory integration?

The human brain has the most incredible ability – surreptitiously re-wiring itself by utilizing new experiences – to alter information emerged even before decades ago. Via this ability called brain plasticity, we can learn, teach, and re-learn without either any restrictions or constraining our brains with dilapidated information. I shall show you how brain plasticity can change our perception and thus cause the McGurk effect.

“Under normal circumstances, the brain’s sensory pathways are not entirely separate, but are interconnected and so can interact and influence each other in various ways. And while most primary sensory areas specialize in processing information from one particular sense organ, most of their downstream partners are so-called association areas, which combine various types of information in a process called multisensory integration⁽¹⁾.”

“Cross-modal processing and multisensory integration are important aspects of normal brain function, as the McGurk effect demonstrates. The McGurk effect is a powerful illusion that arises when there is a discrepancy between what we see and what we hear: the best example is a film clip of someone saying the letter g, dubbed with a voice saying letter b, which is perceived as d. This consistent error clearly shows that vision and hearing interact and that the interaction aids our perception of speech⁽²⁾.”

References

⁽¹⁾ Costandi, Moheb. "Sensory Substitution." Neuroplasticity. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016. 28-30. Print.

⁽²⁾ Costandi, Moheb. "Sensory Substitution." Neuroplasticity. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016. 30. Print.

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