Introduction

Our senses provide information that often appears to arrive simultaneously from the same spatial location but via different modalities, such as when we observe a noisily bouncing ball, hear a laughing face, or see a burning fire and smell smoke. To the observer, spatial and temporal contiguity offers a strong incentive to draw together sensory cues as deriving from a single object or event. Cross-talk between the senses is probably adaptive. By reducing stimulus ambiguity and by insulating the organism from the effects of environmental noise, cross-talk between the senses improves performance. At the level of subjective experience, multisensory integration contributes to a sense of self and an intensified presence of the perceiver in his or her world. This aspect of multisensory integration is particularly relevant for multisensory perception of emotion, which is the focus of this chapter. Indeed, disorders of sensory integration have been associated with loss of the sense of self, as has been documented in schizophrenia (Bleuber, 1911; de Gelder, Vroomen, Annen, Masthof, & Hodiamont, 2003; de Gelder, Vroomen, & Hodiamont, 2003).