Audiovisual Integration Enhances Stimulus Detection Performance in Mice

The detection of objects in the external world improves when humans and animals integrate object features of multiple sensory modalities. Behavioral and neuronal mechanisms underlying multisensory stimulus detection are poorly understood, mainly because they have not been investigated with suitable behavioral paradigms. Such behavioral paradigms should (i) elicit a robust multisensory gain, (ii) incorporate systematic calibration of stimulus amplitude to the sensory capacities of the individual subject, (iii) yield a high trial count, and (iv) be easily compatible with a large variety of neurophysiological recording techniques. We developed an audiovisual stimulus detection task for head-fixed mice which meets all of these critical behavioral constraints. Behavioral data obtained with this task indicated a robust increase in detection performance of multisensory stimuli compared with unisensory cues, which was maximal when both stimulus constituents were presented at threshold intensity. The multisensory behavioral effect was associated with a change in the perceptual performance which consisted of two components. First, the visual and auditory perceptual systems increased their sensitivity meaning that low intensity stimuli were more often detected. Second, enhanced acuity enabled the systems to better classify whether there was a stimulus or not. Fitting our data to signal detection models revealed that the multisensory gain was more likely to be achieved by integration of sensory signals rather than by stimulus redundancy or competition. This validated behavioral paradigm can be exploited to reliably investigate the neuronal correlates of multisensory stimulus detection at the level of single neurons, microcircuits, and larger perceptual systems.