ABSTRACT
Insects, like all animal species, are equipped with multiple sensory channels that extract information from the environment and convert it to adaptive behavioral responses and memories. Past research has greatly advanced our understanding of how information encoding occurs within single sensory channels (such as vision, hearing, somatosensation, and chemosensation) but has paid relatively little attention to specific interactions between different sensory modalities. However, different sensory channels usually have evolved to work in concert, and parallel stimulation of several sensory channels is often essential for the appropriate execution of a particular behavior (Stein and Meredith, 1993; Stein, 1998; Calvert,
2001). In recognition of this observation, a surge of interest in multisensory or crossmodal processing in vertebrates has provided several important insights into the biological roles and underlying neural mechanisms of multisensory interactions (Driver and Spence, 2000; Meredith, 2002; Calvert et al., 2004). Much of this work has employed recently refined imaging techniques and is directed toward an understanding of human multisensory integration in cognitive functions of object/event identification and localization (Stein, 1998; Calvert, 2001; Maravita et al., 2003; De Gelder and Bertelson, 2003; Small, 2004). However, crossmodal interactions are probably essential for analysis of the environment in all animals. This is especially true for insects.
