cueaggregation

Cue aggregation, also known as cue integration, is the perceptual process by which the brain combines multiple sensory cues or contextual signals that provide information about the same environmental property to form a single, cohesive estimate. The goal of aggregation is to produce a more accurate or robust percept than could be achieved from any individual cue alone.

Cues relevant to aggregation span vision, audition, vestibular input, and proprioception, and include depth cues (binocular disparity, motion parallax, perspective), color and lighting cues, motion cues, and spatial localization cues. The brain can integrate cues across modalities, such as visual and auditory information, or within a single modality, such as combining multiple visual depth cues.

Mechanistically, cue aggregation is often described as reliability-weighted combination. In many models, cues are weighted by their precision (the inverse of variance), yielding a statistically optimal estimate under a Bayesian framework. When cues are believed to originate from the same source, the brain tends to fuse them; when cues conflict or come from different sources, causal inference may determine whether to fuse or segregate the information.

Developmentally and in learning, cue weights can adjust with experience, context, and task demands, leading to flexible integration strategies. Neural correlates of cue aggregation are found in higher-level multisensory and parietal areas, with early sensory cortices supplying raw cues.

Applications of cue aggregation span vision science, robotics, human factors, and clinical assessment, while limitations arise when cues are unreliable, ambiguous, or misweighted, potentially producing perceptual illusions or suboptimal judgments.