Auditory dominance over visual perception in the mouse integrating visual-auditory conflict

Abstract

We often experience the conflicts between the sensory modalities, and our brain resolves these conflicts through the fast and accurate integration and elicits coherent perceptual behavior. During the integration of visual-auditory conflict, one modality often dominates the other. However, we still do not understand the neural mechanism of perceptual dominance during the integration of the conflict between sensory modalities. Here, we devised the visual-auditory discrimination tasks both under the actual and artificial conditions. Mice learned to discriminate visual and auditory information, and they showed auditory-dominant perceptual behaviors during the integration of the conflict. We found that the direct inputs from V1 and A1 to the posterior parietal cortex (PTLp) are critical for inducing auditory dominance over visual perception. Inactivation of the PTLp switched the auditory dominance to visual dominance without affecting visual or auditory perception. Furthermore, only V1-selective neurons in PTLp showed significant reduction in their responses to simultaneous V1 and A1 stimulation. Our results demonstrate that the converging inputs from V1 and A1 to PTLp mediate the auditory-dominant perception during the integration of visual-auditory conflict.