Multisensory integration after traumatic brain injury: a reaction time study between pairings of vision, touch and audition

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) frequently results in deficits in attention and speed of information processing. In order to disentangle the influence of sensory-specific factors and the role of cross-modal integration from the supra-modal aspects of cognitive slowing, the present reaction time (RT) study was designed. Simple and choice RT to pairings of visual, auditory and tactile stimuli were measured in 35 TBI patients and 35 matched controls. Results proved a strong influence of sensory-specific and cross-modal factors in the RTs. The tactile modality was more difficult to integrate with the visual and the auditory modality, rather than the visual and the auditory modalities between them. TBI patients showed prolonged simple and choice RTs throughout all tasks, but their difficulty with integrating the tactile modality was disproportionately higher in comparison to controls.