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Multisensory Competition Is Modulated by Sensory Pathway Interactions with Fronto-Sensorimotor and Default-Mode Network Regions

Multisensory information competes for preferential access to consciousness. It remains unknown what neural processes cause one particular modality to win multisensory competition and eventually dominate behavior. Thus, in a paradigm in which human participants sought to make simultaneous auditory and visual detection responses, we sought to identify prestimulus and poststimulus neural signals that were associated with auditory and visual dominance on each trial. Behaviorally, visual detection responses preceded auditory responses more frequently than vice versa. Even when visual responses were preceded by auditory responses, they recovered more quickly from previous responses, indicating the dominance of vision over audition. Neurally, visual precedence was associated with increased prestimulus activity in the prefrontal cortex and reduced prestimulus activity in the default-mode network, and increased poststimulus connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the visual system. Moreover, the dorsal visual stream showed not only increased activity in post-perceptual phases but also enhanced connectivity with the sensorimotor cortex, indicating the functional role of the dorsal visual stream in prioritizing the flow of visual information into the motor system. In contrast, auditory precedence was associated with increased prestimulus activity in the auditory cortex and increased poststimulus neural coupling between the auditory and the sensorimotor cortex. Finally, whenever one modality lost multisensory competition, the corresponding sensory cortex showed enhanced connectivity with the default-mode network. Overall, the outcome of audiovisual competition depended on dynamic interactions between sensory systems and both the fronto-sensorimotor and the default-mode network. Together, these results revealed both the neural causes and the neural consequences of visual and auditory dominance during multisensory competition.