J. Keil 'Brain-state dependent multisensory perception'

We constantly receive information about our environment from multiple sources and via multiple sensory modalities. To successfully navigate our environment, and to accomplish complex tasks such as driving or operating machinery, we need to weight and integrate this information to a subjectively coherent image in our mind. At the same time, relevant and irrelevant information needs to be segregated from irrelevant information due to limited processing capacities. However, our subjective impression of our environment is not stable: In recent years, the hypothesis that ongoing neural oscillations influence sensory processing, and the idea that local oscillations and functional connectivity reflect bottom-up and top-down processes during perception has received substantial support. Here, I will review findings on the influence of the brain state on multisensory perception, and outline how manipulations of physiological and psychological factors could help illuminate the relationship between neural activity and conscious perception.