The ventriloquist in motion: illusory capture of dynamic information across sensory modalities.

Integrating dynamic information across the senses is crucial to survival. However, most laboratory studies have only examined sensory integration for static events. Here we demonstrate that strong crossmodal integration can also occur for an emergent attribute of dynamic arrays, specifically the direction of apparent motion. The results of the present study show that the perceived direction of auditory apparent motion is strongly modulated by apparent motion in vision, and that both spatial and temporal factors play a significant role in this crossmodal effect. We also demonstrate that a split-brain patient who does not perceive visual apparent motion across the midline is immune to this audiovisual dynamic capture effect, highlighting the importance of motion being experienced in order for this new multisensory illusion to occur.