To enable cognitive representations of sensory processes, sensory information derived from our senses (e.g. audition, vestibulation, olfaction/taste, somatosensation, nociception and vision) must, following its initial perception at the level of the sensor, be integrated at the level of the cortex. The transduction of this sensory information, during first-order cortical integration, is followed by increasingly complex higher order processing, which enables the fine-tuning of the sensory percept such that behaviour and memory result.