Introduction to the Special Issue on Multisensory Space — Perception, Neural Representation and Navigation

What is it about?

We perceive our surrounding environment using all of our senses in parallel, building a rich multisensory representation. This multisensory representation can be used to move through our environment and interact spatially with our surroundings. Vision is the most suited suited sense to assist spatial perception, but how essential is it to the process by which we navigate?And what happen when it is lacking, or unreliable? In this special issue we explore the role of vision and visual experience in guiding this process and the neural correlates thereof. We have put together a strong panel of researchers who have devoted their careers to the study of perceptual and spatial learning, and multimodal integration. We describe the use of multisensory information to perceive space, and training for the perception of space. Also, we discuss the use of Virtual Reality tools to manipulate the relative cues between vision, audition and proprioception during navigation and spatial memory tasks. We bring a wider theoretical view on these topics with emphasis on brain organization and reorganization arising from sensory impairment and manipulation.

Featured Image