The diversity of our senses conveys many advantages; it enables them to compensate for one another when needed, and the information they provide about a common event can be integrated to facilitate its processing and, ultimately, adaptive responses. These cooperative interactions are produced by multisensory neurons. A well-studied model in this context is the multisensory neuron in the output layers of the superior colliculus (SC). These neurons integrate and amplify their cross-modal (e.g., visual-auditory) inputs, thereby enhancing the physiological salience of the initiating event and the probability that it will elicit SC-mediated detection, localization, and orientation behavior. Repeated experience with the same visual-auditory stimulus can also increase the neuron's sensitivity to these individual inputs. This observation raised the possibility that such plasticity could be engaged to restore visual responsiveness when compromised. For example, unilateral lesions of visual cortex compromise the visual responsiveness of neurons in the multisensory output layers of the ipsilesional SC and produces profound contralesional blindness (hemianopia). The possibility that multisensory plasticity could restore the visual responses of these neurons, and reverse blindness, was tested in the cat model of hemianopia. Hemianopic subjects were repeatedly presented with spatiotemporally congruent visual-auditory stimulus pairs in the blinded hemifield on a daily or weekly basis. After several weeks of this multisensory exposure paradigm, visual responsiveness was restored in SC neurons and behavioral responses were elicited by visual stimuli in the previously blind hemifield. The constraints on the effectiveness of this procedure proved to be the same as those constraining SC multisensory plasticity: whereas repetitions of a congruent visual-auditory stimulus was highly effective, neither exposure to its individual component stimuli, nor to these stimuli in non-congruent configurations was effective. The restored visual responsiveness proved to be robust, highly competitive with that in the intact hemifield, and sufficient to support visual discrimination.

中文翻译：

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利用多感觉整合的上丘原理来逆转偏盲。

我们感官的多样性传达了许多优势；它使他们能够在需要时相互补偿，并且可以整合他们提供的关于共同事件的信息，以促进其处理，并最终促进适应性反应。这些合作互动是由多感觉神经元产生的。在这方面经过充分研究的模型是上丘 (SC) 输出层中的多感觉神经元。这些神经元整合并放大它们的跨模态（例如，视觉-听觉）输入，从而增强起始事件的生理显着性以及它将引发 SC 介导的检测、定位和定向行为的可能性。重复体验相同的视觉-听觉刺激也可以增加神经元对这些单独输入的敏感度。这一观察提出了这样一种可能性，即这种可塑性可以在受损时用于恢复视觉反应能力。例如，视觉皮层的单侧损伤会损害同侧 SC 多感觉输出层中神经元的视觉反应，并产生严重的对侧失明（偏盲）。在偏盲猫模型中测试了多感觉可塑性恢复这些神经元的视觉反应并逆转失明的可能性。偏盲受试者每天或每周在盲半视野中反复呈现时空一致的视觉-听觉刺激对。经过几周的这种多感官接触范例，视觉反应在 SC 神经元中恢复，并且在先前失明的半场中通过视觉刺激引发行为反应。事实证明，对这一程序有效性的限制与限制 SC 多感官可塑性的限制相同：重复一致的视觉-听觉刺激是非常有效的，既不暴露于其单独的组成刺激，也不暴露于非一致配置中的这些刺激是有效的。恢复的视觉反应被证明是稳健的，与完整的半场相比具有很强的竞争力，并且足以支持视觉辨别。无论是暴露于其单独的组成刺激，还是暴露于非一致配置的这些刺激都是有效的。恢复的视觉反应被证明是稳健的，与完整的半场相比具有很强的竞争力，并且足以支持视觉辨别。无论是暴露于其单独的组成刺激，还是暴露于非一致配置的这些刺激都是有效的。恢复的视觉反应被证明是稳健的，与完整的半场相比具有很强的竞争力，并且足以支持视觉辨别。