Exploring the role of biased multisensory processing in anxiety and PTSD

Information from multiple sensory modalities must be integrated to allow us to extract meaning from the overwhelming sensory signals in our environment. This is particularly true when interpreting others’ emotional states, as emotions can often be complex and ambiguous, and are normally expressed via multiple senses. Biased multisensory processing is therefore likely to disrupt socio-emotional processing, which may contribute to affective and interpersonal problems. Despite evidence of altered multisensory processes in individuals with socio-emotional difficulties (e.g., in autism), there are few studies examining multisensory processes in the context of anxiety and stress-related psychopathology. In this talk, I will present evidence from my PhD research which suggests that biases towards enhanced processing of threat-related information in anxiety influence how emotional information is integrated across multiple modalities, and the likely similarities and differences in the role of multisensory emotion processing for the aetiology of PTSD.