Les Keniston, PhD

Dr. Keniston studies how the brain combines information from separate senses into a single, coherent experience, and what happens to that ability when a sense is lost. His laboratory work has mapped the architecture of the brain’s multisensory convergence zones and shown that when hearing is lost in adulthood, the auditory cortex is taken over by both vision and touch ‐ a finding with direct implications for understanding maladaptive plasticity in the brain.

That work now anchors a translational research program in multisensory rehabilitation: developing sensory‐substitution and virtual‐reality approaches to help people living with sensory loss and neurological injury, grounded in the principle that when one channel of perception is degraded, the others can be recruited and retrained to recover function.

He earned his B.S. in Psychology and Ph.D. in Anatomy (Neural Biology) from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he trained with Dr. David Mayer, whose discovery of stimulation‐produced analgesia opened a new era in pain neuroscience. He then joined Dr. M. Alex Meredith’s group to investigate the cortical architecture of multisensory convergence. Postdoctoral fellowships with Dr. Meredith at VCU and Dr. Barry E. Stein at Wake Forest University School of Medicine ‐ whose rules of multisensory integration defined a generation of research ‐ grounded him in systems‐level circuit analysis that informs his work as both researcher and educator. He maintains active international collaborations in Brazil and China and is the author or co‐author of more than 25 peer‐reviewed publications in journals including PNAS, Cerebral Cortex, and the Journal of Neurophysiology.

At the Meritus School of Osteopathic Medicine, Dr. Keniston is the founding director of the Gross Anatomy Cadaver Program, which he designed and is building to serve the pre‐clerkship curriculum and surgical graduate medical education. He serves as Course Director for Neuroscience and Co‐Director for the Musculoskeletal course, and teaches gross anatomy, histology, embryology, and neuroscience across the pre‐clerkship systems curriculum.

Roles: 

• Founding Director, Gross Anatomy Cadaver Program
• Course Director, Neuroscience (MHNS 1201)
• Co‐Director, Musculoskeletal (MHMS 1101)

Research/Areas of Interest: 

• Multisensory integration and cross-modal plasticity in cerebral cortex
• Neuroanatomy of sensory convergence and cortical reorganization following sensory loss
• Translational multisensory rehabilitation following sensory loss and neurological injury

Professional Affiliations:

• Society for Neuroscience
• American Association of Clinical Anatomists
• International Multisensory Research Forum

Selected Publications:

• Chang S, Zheng B, Keniston L, Xu J, Yu L. Auditory cortex learns to discriminate audiovisual cues through selective multisensory enhancement. eLife. 2025;13:RP102926.
• Chang S, Xu J, Zheng M, Keniston L, Zhou X, Zhang J, Yu L. Integrating visual information into the auditory cortex promotes sound discrimination through choice-related multisensory integration. J Neurosci. 2022;42:8556-68.
• Han X, Xu J, Chang S, Keniston L, Yu L. Multisensory-guided associative learning enhances multisensory representation in primary auditory cortex. Cereb Cortex. 2022;32:1040-54.
• Keniston LP, Henderson SC, Meredith MA. Neuroanatomical identification of crossmodal auditory inputs to interneurons in somatosensory cortex. Exp Brain Res. 2010;202:725-31.
• Allman BL, Keniston LP, Meredith MA. Adult deafness induces somatosensory conversion of ferret auditory cortex. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009;106:5925-30.
• Dehner LR, Keniston LP, Clemo HR, Meredith MA. Cross-modal circuitry between auditory and somatosensory areas of the cat anterior ectosylvian sulcal cortex: a 'new' inhibitory form of multisensory convergence. Cereb Cortex. 2004;14:387-403.
• PubMed Bibliography