ABSTRACT
Why do we combine the inputs from our eyes and ears seemingly effortlessly? That is the central question of the present chapter. The chapter starts with a historic context that details how present-day views of multisensory processing have changed from being considered a process that happens at late stages of perception in association areas of the brain to being a process that already starts at very early perceptual stages and involves a host of subcortical and cortical brain areas. Several audiovisual illusions, such as the McGurk effect and the ventriloquist illusion, which are the result of mismatches between auditory and visual information, are discussed to exemplify how the brain attempts to make these inputs consistent. Following a discussion of the possible neural and statistical mechanisms involved in multisensory integration, the final part of the chapter discusses the multifaceted relation between multisensory integration and attention, a possible role of predictive coding in these processes, and how these integrative processes may change across the lifespan.
