Making Sense of our Senses

This talk overviews our efforts to understand multisensory processes in humans and their practical relevance. First, it summarises how human brain imaging, mapping and stimulation have been innovated to characterise multisensory processes in human cortices, followed by evidence of the behavioural and perceptual relevance of such processes in domains such as object recognition and perceptual completion. Next, the persistence of multisensory processes across time is demonstrated by documenting their contribution to memory functions. This is followed by demonstrations across infancy, childhood, adulthood, and ageing of how low-level multisensory processes scaffold and even predict the integrity of higher-level cognitive functions. Finally, the contributions of multisensory processes to the accessible and democratized rehabilitation of sensory loss are presented. Collectively, this work outlays a roadmap for the central role of multisensory processes as a scaffold across the lifespan in health and disease.