Adult humans make effortless use of multisensory signals and typically integrate them in an optimal fashion.¹ This remarkable ability takes many years for normally sighted children to develop.^2,3 Would individuals born blind or with extremely low vision still be able to develop multisensory integration later in life when surgically treated for sight restoration? Late acquisition of such capability would be a vivid example of the brain’s ability to retain high levels of plasticity. We studied the development of multisensory integration in individuals suffering from congenital dense bilateral cataract, surgically treated years after birth. We assessed cataract-treated individuals’ reliance on their restored visual abilities when estimating the size of an object simultaneously explored by touch. Within weeks to months after surgery, when combining information from vision and touch, they developed a multisensory weighting behavior similar to matched typically sighted controls. Next, we tested whether cataract-treated individuals benefited from integrating vision with touch by increasing the precision of size estimates, as it occurs when integrating signals in a statistically optimal fashion.¹ For participants retested multiple times, such a benefit developed within months after surgery to levels of precision indistinguishable from optimal behavior. To summarize, the development of multisensory integration does not merely depend on age, but requires extensive multisensory experience with the world, rendered possible by the improved post-surgical visual acuity. We conclude that early exposure to multisensory signals is not essential for the development of multisensory integration, which can still be acquired even after many years of visual deprivation.

成年人可以毫不费力地使用多感官信号，并且通常以最佳方式整合它们。¹视力正常的儿童需要多年才能发展出这种非凡的能力。^{2 , 3}天生失明或视力极低的人在接受手术治疗以恢复视力后，是否仍能在以后的生活中发展出多感官整合能力？后期获得这种能力将是大脑保持高水平可塑性能力的一个生动例子。我们研究了患有先天性致密双侧白内障的个体的多感觉整合的发展，这些患者在出生后数年接受了手术治疗。我们评估了接受白内障治疗的个体在估计通过触摸同时探索的物体的大小时对其恢复的视觉能力的依赖。在手术后的几周到几个月内，当结合来自视觉和触觉的信息时，他们开发了一种类似于匹配的通常视力控制的多感官加权行为。下一个，¹对于多次重新测试的参与者，这种益处在手术后几个月内发展到与最佳行为无法区分的精确度水平。总而言之，多感官整合的发展不仅仅取决于年龄，还需要广泛的多感官体验，这得益于术后视力的提高。我们得出的结论是，早期接触多感官信号对于多感官整合的发展并不是必不可少的，即使在多年的视觉剥夺之后仍然可以获得。