Viewpoint on Multisensory Time Perception

In this viewpoint article, Zhuanghua Shi and Virginie van Wassenhove discuss the past, present, and future of multisensory time perception. Drawing on decades of research, they argue that the field has undergone an important shift from the centralized internal clock toward timing as an active inference process. This framework, rooted in Bayesian models and predictive coding, suggests that our sense of time is not a passive readout but a construction that weighs evidence against contextual expectations. One thread in the discussion concerns the temporal window of integration: the authors contrast the narrow, potentially misleading windows seen with simple beeps and flashes with those, more stable, found in audiovisual speech. The authors also explore the interplay between automatic integration and top-down processes - such as attention and expectation - noting the brain's remarkable ability to rewrite recent history through postdictive inference to maintain a unified 'now'. Key controversies are raised and include whether timing relies on dedicated circuits or emerges from neural population dynamics, as well as the specific role of neural oscillations in parsing simultaneous inputs. The authors advocate for biological plausibility and the use of time-resolved encoding-decoding modeling approaches to predict brain activity. They emphasize the use of open-science practices, including the sharing of computational models and datasets. Looking ahead, the authors anticipate that AI will revolutionize the field by handling the computational complexity of massive datasets through 'vibe coding', allowing researchers to focus on fundamental theoretical insights. They advise young scientists to develop strong scientific intuitions before expanding into modeling and to remain bold in bridging multisensory perception with cognition (incl. consciousness and linguistics). The authors emphasize that multisensory timing is central for developing sensory prostheses, and a deeper understanding of how the brain achieves a seamless experience of reality.