Plasticity in Damaged Multisensory Networks

This chapter opens by discussing functional and anatomical locations as well as neural networks of unimodal senses: vision, somatosensation, audition, gustation and olfaction. How and where these unimodal sensory systems intersect and interact with multimodal sensory processes to provide a holistic view of how experiencing complex external objects and events lead to a single multimodal percept. Reviews of current neuropsychological research on damage occurring within both unimodal and multimodal sensory networks further explain the association between these networks and how they operate together in perception. Current research reviews on cross-modal plasticity reveal the neural changes that occur in multisensory areas following brain damage and the potential benefits of this plastic reorganization of the cortex