Multisensory Integration And Child Neurodevelopment Article Review Samples

This Paper was prepared for_________ taught by___________

The thesis of the article by Dionne-Dostie et.al (2015) is a claim the brain’s ability to integrate multisensory inputs reaches its maturity late during childhood and significantly depends on early childhood experience (Dionne-Dostie, Paquette, Lassonde, & Gallaher, 2015). To support the thesis, the authors compare the hypotheses of innate and acquired capacity for multisensory integration (MSI). The perceptions of multimodal objects through different sensory modalities, the ability to distinguish subsequently presented objects and the association of objects with linguistic symbols on the basis of synchrony in infants, serves the main supporting argument from the side of innate MSI hypothesis. The acquired MSI hypothesis shows the evidence of MSI constant refiment, with different senses developing at their own rate, throughout the childhood. Still, it recognizes perinatal experience as essential impetus for this development. The studies in infants and animals illustrating the plasticity and inherent ability of human brain to develop and to reach maturity through combining the various types of sensory information corroborate this chief support argument. Moreover, neuroimaging techniques provide persuasive evidence for cortical multiple-staged MSI processing, from infancy to adolescence, in typical children.
Another main supports for the thesis are studies on MSI in neurodevelopmental disorders which confirm MSI influence on verbal and nonverbal information processing, showing its paradigm is atypical in children with dyslexia. The same is true for children with ADHD, experiencing difficulties in multisensory domains (vestibular and balance control, processing speed and working memory). Again, the neuronal activity corroborates this argument showing asymmetry in gray matter thickness, smaller brain sizes and changed left lobe morphology in children with dyslexia, as well as cortical volume reductions correlating with the symptoms of multisensory deficit severity in children with ADHD.
Thus both innate and acquired MSI hypotheses present the evidence in favor of MSI process taking part in infancy, and its subsequent development later in childhood, showing association between MSI abilities development and its neuroanatomic correlates.

References:

1. Dionne-Dostie, E., Paquette, N., Lassonde, M., & Gallaher, A. (2015) Multisensory Integration and Child Neurodevelopment.Brain Sci., 5, 32-57. doi:10.3390/brainsci5010032