# Role of sensory experience in developing multisensory integration

> **NIH NIH R01** · WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2022 · $90,839

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
A major outstanding issue in sensory neuroscience is how the brain develops its remarkable ability to use
senses together in synergistic ways to improve perceptual and behavioral decisions. Because each sense
transduces a different form of environmental energy, powerful enhancements are obtained by synthesizing
signals pertaining to the same event across the sensory modalities. There is an inherent ambiguity, however, in
determining which signals belong to the same event, and which to different events (“causal inference”, a type of
matching problem). Perhaps as a consequence of this ambiguity, multisensory integration is not an innate
feature of the brain; rather, it must be acquired from experience with cross-modal events in the environment.
How the brain uses this experience to solve the causal inference problem in development is not known. I
hypothesize that the neonatal brain engages a form of statistical learning for this purpose. The algorithm it uses
is predicted to operate on a site-specific basis, so that different multisensory combinatoric rules can be
developed at different loci depending on the specifics of sensory experience. I postulate that the same plastic
mechanisms are in place in the adult, but operate with reduced capacity. To study these questions,
multisensory experience of both neonatal and adult naïve animals will be precisely controlled via a special
rearing facility and sensory exposure chamber, and a combination of electrophysiological and behavioral
methods will be leveraged to examine the functional properties of the multisensory superior colliculus (SC) and
associated cortex (the anterior ectosylvian sulcus, AES).

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10525555
- **Project number:** 3R01EY031532-02S1
- **Recipient organization:** WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** Benjamin A Rowland
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $90,839
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-06-01 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10525555

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10525555, Role of sensory experience in developing multisensory integration (3R01EY031532-02S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-01 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10525555. Licensed CC0.

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