Highlights There is a strong correlation between brain lesion severity and visual function, evident also with a Structural MRI. It is confirmed the validity of MRI semi-quantitative scale published by Fiori et al. (2014). There is a frequent association of PVL with thalamic lesions with important repercussion on visual function.

A bstractResults obtained in both animal models and hemianopic patients indicate that sound, spatially and temporally coincident with a visual stimulus, can improve visual perception in the blind hemifield, probably due to activation of 'multisensory neurons', mainly located in the superior colliculus. In view of this evidence, a new rehabilitation approach, based on audiovisual stimulation of visual field, has been proposed, and applied in adults with visual field reduction due to unilateral brain lesions. So far, results have been very encouraging, with improvements in visual search abilities. Based on these findings, we have investigated the possibility of inducing long-lasting amelioration also in children with a visual deficit due to acquired brain lesions. Our results suggest that, in the absence of sponta neous recovery, audiovisual training can induce activation of visual responsiveness of the oculomotor system also in children and adolescents with acquired lesions and confirm the putatively important role of the superior colliculus (SC) in this process.

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Multisensory processes permit combinations of several inputs, coming from different sensory systems, allowing for a coherent representation of biological events and facilitating adaptation to environment. For these reasons, their application in neurological and neuropsychological rehabilitation has been enhanced in the last decades. Recent studies on animals and human models have indicated that, on one hand multisensory integration matures gradually during post-natal life and development is closely linked to environment and experience and, on the other hand, that modality-specific information seems to do not benefit by redundancy across multiple sense modalities and is more readily perceived in unimodal than in multimodal stimulation. In this review, multisensory process development is analyzed, highlighting clinical effects in animal and human models of its manipulation for rehabilitation of sensory disorders. In addition, new methods of early intervention based on multisensory-based rehabilitation approach and their applications on different infant populations at risk of neurodevelopmental disabilities are discussed.

Telerehabilitation, defined as the method by which communication technologies are used to provide remote rehabilitation, although still underused, could be as efficient and effective as the conventional clinical rehabilitation practices. In the literature, there are descriptions of the use of telerehabilitation in adult patients with various diseases, whereas it is seldom used in clinical practice with child and adolescent patients. We have developed a new audiovisual telerehabilitation (AVT) system, based on the multisensory capabilities of the human brain, to provide a new tool for adults and children with visual field defects in order to improve ocular movements toward the blind hemifield. The apparatus consists of a semicircular structure in which visual and acoustic stimuli are positioned. A camera is integrated into the mechanical structure in the center of the panel to control eye and head movements. Patients can use this training system with a customized software on a tablet. From hospital, the therapist has complete control over the training process, and the results of the training sessions are automatically available within a few minutes on the hospital website. In this paper, we report the AVT system protocol and the preliminary results on its use by three adult patients. All three showed improvements in visual detection abilities with long-term effects. In the future, we will test this apparatus with children and their families. Since interventions for impairments in the visual field have a substantial cost for individuals and for the welfare system, we expect that our research could have a profound socio-economic impact avoiding prolonged and intensive hospital stays.