Early beta oscillations in multisensory association areas underlie crossmodal performance enhancement

The combination of signals from different sensory modalities can enhance perception and facilitate behavioral responses. While previous research described crossmodal influences in a wide range of tasks, it remains unclear how such influences drive performance enhancements. In particular, the neural mechanisms underlying performance-relevant crossmodal influences, as well as the latency and spatial profile of such influences are not well understood. Here, we examined data from high-density electroencephalography (N = 30) recordings to characterize the oscillatory signatures of crossmodal facilitation of response speed, as manifested in the speeding of visual responses by concurrent task-irrelevant auditory information. Using a data-driven analysis approach, we found that individual gains in response speed correlated with larger beta power difference (13-25 Hz) between the audiovisual and the visual condition, starting within 80 ms after stimulus onset in the secondary visual cortex and in multisensory association areas in the parietal cortex. In addition, we examined data from electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings in four epileptic patients in a comparable paradigm. These ECoG data revealed reduced beta power in audiovisual compared with visual trials in the superior temporal gyrus (STG). Collectively, our data suggest that the crossmodal facilitation of response speed is associated with reduced early beta power in multisensory association and secondary visual areas. The reduced early beta power may reflect an auditory-driven feedback signal to improve visual processing through attentional gating. These findings improve our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying crossmodal response speed facilitation and highlight the critical role of beta oscillations in mediating behaviorally relevant multisensory processing.