The human brain constantly strives to create a unified picture of our world from a bombardment of sensory input. Under most circumstances, sensory inputs (e.g., sight and sound) provide consistent estimates of object attributes. For instance, during a face-to-face conversation, a listener can estimate a talker’s location from complementary visual and auditory spatial cues. However, instances of intersensory conflict, when sensory systems provide incompatible cues, are common and can lead to confusion or illusory percepts such as the ventriloquist illusion. Understanding how the brain resolves such intersensory conflict can provide invaluable insight into normal brain function. I use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to answer these questions.

Publications:

Bishop, CW and Miller, LM. (2009) A multisensory cortical network for understanding speech in noise. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21(9), 1790-1805 .

Shahin, AJ, Bishop, CW, and Miller, LM. (2009) Neural mechanisms for illusory filling-in of degraded speech. NeuroImage, 44(3), 1133-1143