Dr-MUSIC: An Effective Device for Investigating Multisensory Mechanisms during Development with EEG recordings.

From birth, we are continuously exposed to multisensory stimuli that we learn to select and integrate during development to perceive a coherent world. To date, there are no optimal solutions to investigate how auditory, visual and tactile signals are integrated during EEG recording in infants and children. The present work aims to introduce Dr-MUSIC, a novel multisensory device with EEG-compatible timing and an attractive design for children.

The Suite for the Assessment of Low-Level cues on Orientation (SALLO): The psychophysics of spatial orientation in virtual reality.

Spatial orientation is a complex ability that emerges from the interaction of several systems in a way that is still unclear. One of the reasons limiting the research on the topic is the lack of methodologies aimed at studying multimodal psychophysics in an ecological manner and with affordable settings. Virtual reality can provide a workaround to this impasse by using virtual stimuli rather than real ones.

The effect of visuo-haptic exploration on the development of the geometric cross-sectioning ability.

Cross-sectioning is a shape understanding task where the participants must infer and interpret the spatial features of three-dimensional (3D) solids by depicting their internal two-dimensional (2D) arrangement. An increasing body of research provides evidence of the crucial role of sensorimotor experience in acquiring these complex geometrical concepts. Here, we focused on how cross-sectioning ability emerges in young children and the influence of multisensory visuo-haptic experience in geometrical learning through two experiments.

The causal role of vision in the development of spatial coordinates: Evidence from visually impaired children.

Many findings suggest that visual deprivation in early life negatively affects the development of spatial competence and that sighted and visually impaired individuals use different strategies to encode spatial positions. This study aims to assess the role of vision in developing spatial coordinates by running three studies in a sample of children and adolescents with and without visual impairments ( = 42, 16 female, 8-18 years old, 100% European), using visual and auditory versions of Simon task with uncrossed and crossed hands posture. The first study assessed that visual and auditory external coordinates mature in parallel in sighted children.

The link between blindness onset and audiospatial processing: testing audiomotor cues in acoustic virtual reality.

Vision seems essential for cross-modal calibration of auditory cues in spatial perception. Previous findings showed that, in some specific tasks such as sound localization, blind individuals have enhanced skills, suggesting that the audiomotor loop might partially compensate for early visual loss in the calibration of auditory space; however, direct evidence is still lacking. Here, we proposed a method based on the alteration of the audiomotor loop.