Multisensory object discrimination is essential in everyday life, yet the neural mechanisms underlying this process remain unclear. In this study, we trained rats to perform a two-alternative forced-choice task using both auditory and visual cues. Our findings reveal that multisensory perceptual learning actively engages auditory cortex (AC) neurons in both visual and audiovisual processing. Importantly, many audiovisual neurons in the AC exhibited experience-dependent associations between their visual and auditory preferences, displaying a unique integration model. This model employed selective multisensory enhancement for the auditory-visual pairing guiding the contralateral choice, which correlated with improved multisensory discrimination. Furthermore, AC neurons effectively distinguished whether a preferred auditory stimulus was paired with its associated visual stimulus using this distinct integrative mechanism. Our results highlight the capability of sensory cortices to develop sophisticated integrative strategies, adapting to task demands to enhance multisensory discrimination abilities.

A classic distinction from the domain of external attention is that between anticipatory orienting and subsequent re-orienting of attention to unexpected events. Whether and how humans also re-orient attention ‘in mind’ following expected and unexpected working-memory tests remains elusive. We leveraged spatial modulations in neural activity and gaze to isolate re-orienting within the spatial layout of visual working memory following central memory tests of certain, expected, or unexpected mnemonic content. Besides internal orienting after predictive cues, we unveil a second stage of internal attentional deployment following both expected and unexpected memory tests. Following expected tests, internal attentional deployment was not contingent on prior orienting, suggesting an additional verification – ‘double checking’ – in memory. Following unexpected tests, re-focusing of alternative memory content was prolonged. This brings attentional re-orienting to the domain of working memory and underscores how memory tests can invoke either a verification or a revision of our internal focus.