Touching Sounds: Thalamocortical Plasticity and the Neural Basis of Multisensory Integration

To date, noninvasive neuroimaging research on multisensory perception has focused on cortical activations. In a series of elegant functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments, Beauchamp and Ro recently investigated altered cortical activations associated with acquired sound–touch synesthesia resulting from a thalamic lesion. Their findings highlight the important role of intact thalamocortical projections for preventing illusory crossmodal perception and for underlying reliable multisensory integration.