The children watched a silent video of their choice while they were presented with unrelated sounds and vibrations. The auditory and vibrational stimuli were presented separately (creating so-called unisensory conditions) and then together (multisensory condition), which acted as the researchers’ index of MSI. The children’s EEG responses to the unisensory conditions were summed and compared to their EEG responses to multisensory conditions.
The responses of the typically developing children to the multisensory stimuli exceeded the sum of their responses to the unisensory stimuli―an indication of healthy MSI, according to the researchers. In the ASD children, by contrast, the differences between the sum of children’s unisensory responses and their MSI responses were not nearly as pronounced, indicating that these kids were not integrating multisensory information as effectively.
source/credit : sciencedaily