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• Multisensory stimulation produces a more balanced and widespread activity in the brain's functional network. • Older adults show a more balanced network, while young adults still show the co-support between ipsilateral brain regions. • LPFC and LMC may be the possible hub of strong connectivity in this multisensory-motor network. This study aims to explore the age-related effects of hand rehabilitation training under multisensory stimulation interaction on brain functional networks. A multisensory stimulation training glove (MSTG) was designed to realize 3 sensory guidance modes, namely audio-visual guidance (AVG), visual guidance (VG) and no guidance (NG). This study recruited 20 older subjects as the experimental group and 22 young people as the control group. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to monitor haemoglobin concentration in the motor cortex (MC), prefrontal cortex (PFC), temporary lo be (TL) and occipital lobe (OL) under three different guidance stages, and further analysed the cortical activation and functional connectivity (FC). Multisensory guidance stage showed more activation and higher FC in all subjects. The activated brain regions of the older subjects showed bilateral activation, which is consistent with the Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults (HAROLD) model. In terms of brain region coordination, older people have a more balanced and denser functional network in the left and right hemispheres compared to younger people. Meanwhile, multisensory stimulation produced a positive training effect on the number of training and reaction time. Audio-visual combined stimulation had a significant gain effect on hand training at different ages. However, older adults induce a wider range of cortical activations. At the same time, young and older people have different intercortical coordination networks. All these results provide theoretically and applied references for multisensory stimulation in the prevention and rehabilitation of ageing and brain neurological disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• NIRS was designed to detect effect of stimulation on cortical activation response. • Multisensory environment can induce cortical activation in most brain regions. • Multisensory stimuli are more beneficial to neural activities and cognitive control. • Activation of the motor cortex is closely related to the cognitive performance. This study aimed to assess the effects of the multisensory rehabilitation product for stroke patients on cortical activation response through near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). The music rehabilitation glove (MRG), multisensory rehabilitation product, was developed with a user-centered design concept. The 40-channel NIRS system monitored the cortical activation changes in the motor cortex (MC), prefrontal cortex (PFC), temporal lobe (TL) and occipital lobe (OL) of 22 young subjects during "sequential finger-to-thumb opposition movements (SFTOM)" phase of traditional training and "musical finger-to-thumb opposition movements (MFTOM)" phase of MRG training. The two phases of training showed significant activation (P < 0.05) in the cerebral cortex compared with baseline, with more activation during MFTOM in the MC, PFC and TL. Compared with SFTOM, there were 22 channels of cortical activation in MFTOM that had significant enhancements (P < 0.05). There was also a significant positive correlation between the prefrontal cortex and motor cortex in the cortical activation. According to these results, MFTOM-induced cortical activation in the MC, PFC and TL with visual, auditory and tactile stimuli was stronger than SFTOM, providing evidence that the multisensory stimulation is more beneficial to cortical activation and cognitive control to promote neurological recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]