Perceived electrical shock and Bayesian inference with multisensory stimuli

An electrical-accident victim's recollection may be dramatically distorted by Bayesian inference in multisensory integration. Suddenly hearing the sound and seeing the bright flash of an electrical arc can cause a person to form the honest but false impression that they had experienced an electrical shock. Bayesian causal inference governs multisensory perceptual processing in general [1, 2]. If the sensory signals are largely consistent, the brain will infer a common cause for the signals and integrate them [1, 3-6].
Source: The American Journal of Emergency Medicine - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research