Abstract
Animals use cognitive behavior, by integrating information from multiple senses, to cope with the complex and changing environment. However, it is not yet understood how single sensory cognitive processes get modified and combined by multisensory cognition in these environments. To address this question, we exposed mouse to positive (tactile experience enrichment (TEE)) and negative (chronic restraint stress (CRS)) environments, and then studied how the dependence of their behavior on unimodal sensory (tactile or visual) processing was influenced by different environments. We found that TEE promoted object recognition behavior that depended on vision or tactile participation alone, whereas CRS impaired this dependence of behavior on single sensory channels. These results suggest that a positive environment promotes unimodal cognitive behavior, while the behavioral effect of negative environments is the opposite.