%0 Journal Article
%T Mental Imagery Induces Cross
%A Christopher C. Berger
%A H. Henrik Ehrsson
%J Psychological Science
%@ 1467-9280
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0956797617748959
%X Can what we imagine in our minds change how we perceive the world in the future? A continuous process of multisensory integration and recalibration is responsible for maintaining a correspondence between the senses (e.g., vision, touch, audition) and, ultimately, a stable and coherent perception of our environment. This process depends on the plasticity of our sensory systems. The so-called ventriloquism aftereffect¡ªa shift in the perceived localization of sounds presented alone after repeated exposure to spatially mismatched auditory and visual stimuli¡ªis a clear example of this type of plasticity in the audiovisual domain. In a series of six studies with 24 participants each, we investigated an imagery-induced ventriloquism aftereffect in which imagining a visual stimulus elicits the same frequency-specific auditory aftereffect as actually seeing one. These results demonstrate that mental imagery can recalibrate the senses and induce the same cross-modal sensory plasticity as real sensory stimuli
%K cross-modal plasticity
%K auditory perception
%K mental imagery
%K multisensory integration
%K open data
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797617748959