Auditory perceptual load: A review.

Selective attention is a crucial mechanism in everyday life, allowing us to focus on a portion of incoming sensory information at the expense of other less relevant stimuli. The circumstances under which irrelevant stimuli are successfully ignored have been a topic of scientific interest for several decades now. Over the last 20 years, the perceptual load theory (e.

The Role of Pitch and Tempo in Sound-Temperature Crossmodal Correspondences.

We explored the putative existence of crossmodal correspondences between sound attributes and beverage temperature. An online pre-study was conducted first, in order to determine whether people would associate the auditory parameters of pitch and tempo with different imagined beverage temperatures. The same melody was manipulated to create a matrix of 25 variants with five different levels of both pitch and tempo.

Carbon dioxide insufflation deflects airborne particles from an open surgical wound model.

Background: Surgical site infections remain a significant burden on healthcare systems and may benefit from new countermeasures.

Aim: To assess the merits of open surgical wound CO insufflation via a gas diffuser to reduce airborne contamination, and to determine the distribution of CO in and over a wound.

Methods: An experimental approach with engineers and clinical researchers was employed to measure the gas flow pattern and motion of airborne particles in a model of an open surgical wound in a simulated theatre setting.

Sodium Tetraborate Decahydrate Treatment Reduces Hydrogen Sulfide and the Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria Population of Swine Manure.

Emission of odorous and toxic gases from stored livestock manure is well documented and poses a serious health risk to farmers and livestock. Hydrogen sulfide emissions have been sharply rising with increasingly intensive livestock production and are of particular concern because of the acute toxicity of this gas. Numerous strategies, technologies, and chemical treatments have been used to control hydrogen sulfide emissions, but none have worked particularly well because they are neither cost-effective nor environmentally sustainable, or they are too toxic for animals.

Tactile suppression in goal-directed movement.

Sharing numerous characteristics with suppression in the other senses, tactile suppression is a reliable phenomenon that accompanies movement. By investigating the simplest of movements (e.g.

Multisensory integration is independent of perceived simultaneity.

The importance of multisensory integration for perception and action has long been recognised. Integrating information from individual senses increases the chance of survival by reducing the variability in the incoming signals, thus allowing us to respond more rapidly. Reaction times (RTs) are fastest when the components of the multisensory signals are simultaneous.

Eating with our eyes: From visual hunger to digital satiation.

One of the brain's key roles is to facilitate foraging and feeding. It is presumably no coincidence, then, that the mouth is situated close to the brain in most animal species. However, the environments in which our brains evolved were far less plentiful in terms of the availability of food resources (i.

The Complex Interplay Between Multisensory Integration and Perceptual Awareness.

The integration of information has been considered a hallmark of human consciousness, as it requires information being globally available widespread neural interactions. Yet the complex interdependencies between multisensory integration and perceptual awareness, or consciousness, remain to be defined. While perceptual awareness has traditionally been studied in a single sense, in recent years we have witnessed a surge of interest in the role of multisensory integration in perceptual awareness.

"Smooth operator": Music modulates the perceived creaminess, sweetness, and bitterness of chocolate.

There has been a recent growth of interest in determining whether sound (specifically music and soundscapes) can enhance not only the basic taste attributes associated with food and beverage items (such as sweetness, bitterness, sourness, etc.), but also other important components of the tasting experience, such as, for instance, crunchiness, creaminess, and/or carbonation. In the present study, participants evaluated the perceived creaminess of chocolate.

Using Single Colors and Color Pairs to Communicate Basic Tastes II: Foreground-Background Color Combinations.

People associate basic tastes (e.g., sweet, sour, bitter, and salty) with specific colors (e.

Using Single Colors and Color Pairs to Communicate Basic Tastes.

Recently, it has been demonstrated that people associate each of the basic tastes (e.g., sweet, sour, bitter, and salty) with specific colors (e.

Metacognition in Multisensory Perception.

Metacognition - the ability to monitor one's own decisions and representations, their accuracy and uncertainty - is considered a hallmark of intelligent behavior. Little is known about metacognition in our natural multisensory environment. To form a coherent percept, the brain should integrate signals from a common cause but segregate those from independent causes.

Hemispheric asymmetry: Looking for a novel signature of the modulation of spatial attention in multisensory processing.

The extent to which attention modulates multisensory processing in a top-down fashion is still a subject of debate among researchers. Typically, cognitive psychologists interested in this question have manipulated the participants' attention in terms of single/dual tasking or focal/divided attention between sensory modalities. We suggest an alternative approach, one that builds on the extensive older literature highlighting hemispheric asymmetries in the distribution of spatial attention.

"What's Your Taste in Music?" A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Various Soundscapes in Evoking Specific Tastes.

We report on the results of two online experiments designed to compare different soundtracks that had been composed (by various researchers and sound designers) in order to evoke/match different basic tastes. In Experiment 1, 100 participants listened to samples from 24 soundtracks and chose the taste (sweet, sour, salty, or bitter) that best matched each sample. Overall, the sweet soundtracks most effectively evoked the taste intended by the composer (participants chose sweet 56.

Drawing sounds: representing tones and chords spatially.

Research on the crossmodal correspondences has revealed that seemingly unrelated perceptual information can be matched across the senses in a manner that is consistent across individuals. An interesting extension of this line of research is to study how sensory information biases action. In the present study, we investigated whether different sounds (i.

Visually Induced Inhibition of Return Affects the Integration of Auditory and Visual Information.

Multisensory integration (MSI) and exogenous spatial attention can both speedup responses to perceptual events. Recently, it has been shown that audiovisual integration at exogenously attended locations is reduced relative to unattended locations. This effect was observed at short cue-target intervals (200-250 ms).

The Taste of Typeface.

Previous research has demonstrated that typefaces can convey meaning over-and-above the actual semantic content of whatever happens to be written. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that people match basic taste words (sweet, sour, salty, and bitter) to typefaces varying in their roundness versus angularity. In Experiment 1, the participants matched rounder typefaces with the word "sweet," while matching more angular typefaces with the taste words "bitter," "salty," and "sour.

Assessing the Effect of Musical Congruency on Wine Tasting in a Live Performance Setting.

At a wine tasting event with live classical music, we assessed whether participants would agree that certain wine and music pairings were congruent. We also assessed the effect of musical congruency on the wine tasting experience. The participants were given two wines to taste and two pieces of music-one chosen to match each wine-were performed live.

Health and Pleasure in Consumers' Dietary Food Choices: Individual Differences in the Brain's Value System.

Taking into account how people value the healthiness and tastiness of food at both the behavioral and brain levels may help to better understand and address overweight and obesity-related issues. Here, we investigate whether brain activity in those areas involved in self-control may increase significantly when individuals with a high body-mass index (BMI) focus their attention on the taste rather than on the health benefits related to healthy food choices. Under such conditions, BMI is positively correlated with both the neural responses to healthy food choices in those brain areas associated with gustation (insula), reward value (orbitofrontal cortex), and self-control (inferior frontal gyrus), and with the percent of healthy food choices.

Assessing the Role of Taste Intensity and Hedonics in Taste-Shape Correspondences.

Taste liking influences the way in which people match tastes to shapes. However, taste-shape matching cannot be explained entirely by taste hedonics. Here, we assess whether variations in taste intensity influence such crossmodal correspondences.

'Striking a Sour Note': Assessing the Influence of Consonant and Dissonant Music on Taste Perception.

We report two experiments designed to investigate the consequences of manipulating the harmonic content of background music on taste perception. The participants in the present study evaluated samples of mixed fruit juice whilst listening to soundtracks that had either been harmonised with consonant or dissonant musical intervals. Each sample of juice was rated on three computer-based scales: One scale was anchored with the words sour and sweet, while the other two scales involved hedonic ratings of the music and of the juice.

When Sandpaper Is 'Kiki' and Satin Is 'Bouba': an Exploration of the Associations Between Words, Emotional States, and the Tactile Attributes of Everyday Materials.

Over the last decade, scientists working on the topic of multisensory integration, as well as designers and marketers involved in trying to understand consumer behavior, have become increasingly interested in the non-arbitrary associations (e.g., sound symbolism) between different sensorial attributes of the stimuli they work with.

Crossmodal Correspondences: Four Challenges.

The renewed interest that has emerged around the topic of crossmodal correspondences in recent years has demonstrated that crossmodal matchings and mappings exist between the majority of sensory dimensions, and across all combinations of sensory modalities. This renewed interest also offers a rapidly-growing list of ways in which correspondences affect--or interact with--metaphorical understanding, feelings of 'knowing', behavioral tasks, learning, mental imagery, and perceptual experiences. Here we highlight why, more generally, crossmodal correspondences matter to theories of multisensory interactions.