VISUAL REHABILITATION USING THE PRINCIPLES OF MULTISENSORY INTEGRATION

Abstract

Because all organisms live in a world that produces stimuli of multiple sensory modalities, multisensory integration has become an invaluable tool for discriminating signals from the noise. Multisensory integration is the process by which information from different senses is combined in the brain to produce effects stronger than those seen evoked by any of the unisensory components presented individually. There are constraints on this process honed by environmental experience, and within this framework, the conditions leading to the greatest benefit derived from multisensory integration can be approximated by heuristics derived from these constraints (Xu et al. 2015). Here we examine some of these constraints and stimulus properties from which the greatest benefit is derived. Traditionally the benefits of multisensory integration manifest behaviorally in the form of lower stimulus detectability thresholds, and neurophysiologically in the form of increased firing rate. However, this thesis will illustrate the benefit of multisensory integration behaviorally in the visual rehabilitation process.