Why seeing is believing: merging auditory and visual worlds

Vision may dominate our perception of space not because of any inherent physiological advantage of visual over other sensory connections in the brain, but because visual information tends to be more reliable than other sources of spatial information, and the central nervous system integrates information in a statistically optimal fashion. This review discusses recent experiments on audiovisual integration that support this hypothesis. We consider candidate neural codes that would enable optimal integration and the implications of optimal integration for perception and plasticity.