In recent years there has been a dramatic progress in understanding how stimuli from different sensory modalities are integrated among each other. Multisensory integration results in a unitary representation of the world that strongly characterizes perception and cognition in humans. Knowledge about multi sensory integration has research techniques and approaches, including neurophysiology, experimental psychology, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and computational modelling. This special issue aims at presenting an up-to-date integrative overview of the physiological, psychological, developmental, and functional processes associated with multisensory integration. The proposed collection of papers is organized thematically into sections, each featuring a state-of-the-art review of key themes in multisensory research, from more approaches in the animal, to the study of multisensory perception and cognition in humans. Specifically, this special issue will consider: The physiological mechanisms of multisensory processing in cortical and subcortical brain structures of model animal species, (rat, cat, and monkey); current biologically inspired computational modelling of multisensory integration; evidence about the multisensory contributions to perception in humans, as highlighted by psychophysical and neuropsychological evidence; the neural basis of multisensory processing in the human brain uncovered by recent neuroimaging techniques, including EEG, PET, fMRI; the consequences of the breakdown of normal sensory integration as shown by studies with techniques of brain stimulation in humans; developmental processes of multisensory perception in humans and the constrains for the emergence of multisensory processes in relation to sensory experience; the issue of crossmodal neuroplasticity concerning behavioral and neural changes following sensory deprivation. The challenge of this Research Topic is to provide an interdisciplinary context allowing to understand the basic principles of multisensory integration in humans and the key issues that this fascinating field of study rises for future research.

The world of perception is multisensory. Even a simple task such as judging the position of a light in a dark room depends not only on vision but also on sensory signals about the position of our body in space. Likewise, how we experience food depends on sensory signals originating from the mouth, but also from nose signals, and even vision and hearing. However, traditional books on perception still discuss each of the “senses” separately. This book takes a different stance: it defines perception as intrinsically multisensory from the start and examines multisensory interactions as key process behind how we perceive our own body, control its movements, perceive and recognise objects, respond to edible objects, perceive space, and perceive time. In addition, the book discusses multisensory processing in synaesthesia, multisensory attention, and the role of multisensory processing in learning. As an introduction to multisensory perception, this book is essential reading for students in psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience at the advanced undergraduate to postgraduate levels. As the chapters address topics that are often left out of standard textbooks, this book will also serve as a useful reference for specialist perception scientists and clinicians. Finally, as a monograph understandable to the educated non-specialist this book will also be of interest to professionals who need to take into account multisensory processing in domains such as, for instance, physiotherapy, neurological rehabilitation, human-computer interfaces, marketing, or the design of products and services.

We perceive and understand our environment using many sensory systems-vision, touch, hearing, taste, smell, and proprioception. These multiple sensory modalities not only give us complementary sources of information about the environment but also an understanding that is richer and more complex than one modality alone could achieve. As adults, we integrate the multiple signals from these sense organs into unified functional representations. However, the ease with which we accomplish this feat belies its computational complexity. Not only do the senses convey information about the environment in different neural codes, but the relationship between the senses frequently changes when, for example, the body changes posture (e.g. when the eyes move in their sockets), or indeed shape, when the body grows across development. These computational problems prompt an important question which represents the key focus of this book: How do we develop the ability to integrate the senses? While there is a considerable literature on the development of single senses, such as vision or hearing, few books have considered the development of all our senses, and more importantly, how they develop the ability to work with each other. This book is unique in exploring this extraordinary feat of human nature - how we develop the ability to integrate our senses. It will be an important book for all those in the fields of cognitive and developmental neuroscience.

Multisensory Perception: From Laboratory to Clinic surveys the current state of knowledge on multisensory processes, synthesizing information from diverse streams of research and defining hypotheses and questions to direct future work. Reflecting the nature of the field, the book is interdisciplinary, comprising the findings and views of writers with diverse backgrounds and varied methods, including psychophysical, neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging approaches. Sections cover basic principles, specific interactions between the senses, the topic of crossmodal correspondences between particular sensory attributes, the related topic of synesthesia, and the clinic. Offers a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the current state of knowledge on multisensory processes Coverage includes basic principles, specific interactions between the senses, crossmodal correspondences and the clinical aspects of multisensory processes Includes psychophysical, neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging approaches

It has become accepted in the neuroscience community that perception and performance are quintessentially multisensory by nature. Using the full palette of modern brain imaging and neuroscience methods, The Neural Bases of Multisensory Processes details current understanding in the neural bases for these phenomena as studied across species, stages of development, and clinical statuses. Organized thematically into nine sub-sections, the book is a collection of contributions by leading scientists in the field. Chapters build generally from basic to applied, allowing readers to ascertain how fundamental science informs the clinical and applied sciences. Topics discussed include: Anatomy, essential for understanding the neural substrates of multisensory processing Neurophysiological bases and how multisensory stimuli can dramatically change the encoding processes for sensory information Combinatorial principles and modeling, focusing on efforts to gain a better mechanistic handle on multisensory operations and their network dynamics Development and plasticity Clinical manifestations and how perception and action are affected by altered sensory experience Attention and spatial representations The last sections of the book focus on naturalistic multisensory processes in three separate contexts: motion signals, multisensory contributions to the perception and generation of communication signals, and how the perception of flavor is generated. The text provides a solid introduction for newcomers and a strong overview of the current state of the field for experts.

It should come as no surprise to those interested in sensory processes that its research history is among the longest and richest of the many systematic efforts to understand how our bodies function. The continuing obsession with sensory systems is as much a re?ection of the fundamental need to understand how we experience the physical world as it is to understand how we become who we are based on those very experiences. The senses function as both portal and teacher, and their individual and collective properties have fascinated scientists and philosophers for millennia. In this context, the attention directed toward specifying their properties on a sense-by-sense basis that dominated sensory research in the 20th century seems a prelude to our current preoccupation with how they function in concert. Nevertheless, it was the concentrated effort on the operational principles of in- vidual senses that provided the depth of understanding necessary to inform current efforts to reveal how they act cooperatively. We know that the information provided by any individual sensory modality is not always veridical, but is subject to a myriad of modality-speci?c distortions. Thus, the brain’s ability to compare across the senses and to integrate the information they provide is not only a way to examine the accuracy of any individual sensory channel but also a way to enhance the collective information they make available to the brain.

While Aristotle acknowledges the connection between rhetoric, biology, and cognitive abilities, scholarship continues to struggle to integrate the fields of rhetoric and neurobiology. Drawing on recent work in neurorhetoric, this book offers a model that integrates multimodal rhetorical theory and multisensory neural processing theory pertaining to cognition and learning. Using existing theories from multimodal rhetoric and specific findings from neurobiological studies, the author develops a model that integrates concepts from both fields, bridging, if not uniting, them. He also discusses possible applications of the new model, with specific case studies related to training and instruction. These applications include various media used in instructional and training contexts, such as print, slide shows, videos, simulations, and hands-on training. The book thus introduces concepts of cognitive neuroscience to multimodal rhetorical theory and facilitates theorization combining multimodal rhetoric and multisensory cognition, and serves as a vehicle by which readers can better understand the links between multimodal rhetoric and cognitive neuroscience associated with technical communication. Integrating case studies from industry and practice, the text makes explicit connections between academic scholarship and workplace preparation. It also describes how interdisciplinary research can contribute to pharmaceutical research, as well as the development of productive instructional materials. Rhetoric is affected by how the brain of any member of a given audience can process information. This book can promote further research-qualitative and quantitative-to develop a better understanding of the relationship between multimodal messages and how the brain processes such information.