The Brain Is Fabricated for the Sake of the Supreme Spirit, the Senses, and Also the Movement That Depends upon Our Will

2015 ◽  
pp. 46-50
Author(s):  
Marco Catani ◽  
Stefano Sandrone
Keyword(s):  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Trower

The study of the senses has become a rich topic in recent years. Senses of Vibration explores a wide range of sensory experience and makes a decisive new contribution to this growing field by focussing not simply on the senses as such, but on the material experience - vibration - that underpins them. This is the first book to take the theme of vibration as central, offering an interdisciplinary history of the phenomenon and its reverberations in the cultural imaginary. It tracks vibration through the work of a wide range of writers, including physiologists (who thought vibrations in the nerves delivered sensations to the brain), physicists (who claimed that light, heat, electricity and other forms of energy were vibratory), spiritualists (who figured that spiritual energies also existed in vibratory form), and poets and novelists from Coleridge to Dickens and Wells. Senses of Vibration is a work of scholarship that cuts through a range of disciplines and will reverberate for many years to come.


1875 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 136-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. D. Handyside

The author showed to the Society a small entire specimen of the P. gladius, and next described, from a larger opened and dissected one, and from part of an adult fish, the spinal cord, the brain, the organs of the senses, and other parts of its nervous system. He illustrated his remarks by exhibiting four large drawings and nine smaller ones, including six microscopic views, explanatory of his description of the structure and disposition of the spino-cerebral axis, the encephalon as viewed from above and below, the ramifications of the encephalic nerves, and more particularly the structures subserving the senses of smell, sight, and hearing.


2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 989-997 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.E. Lugo ◽  
R. Doti ◽  
Walter Wittich ◽  
Jocelyn Faubert

Multisensory integration in humans is thought to be essentially a brain phenomenon, but theories are silent as to the possible involvement of the peripheral nervous system. We provide evidence that this approach is insufficient. We report novel tactile-auditory and tactilevisual interactions in humans, demonstrating that a facilitating sound or visual stimulus that is exactly synchronous with an excitatory tactile signal presented at the lower leg increases the peripheral representation of that excitatory signal. These results demonstrate that during multisensory integration, the brain not only continuously binds information obtained from the senses, but also acts directly on that information by modulating activity at peripheral levels. We also discuss a theoretical framework to explain this novel interaction.


2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 889-890
Author(s):  
Monique Radeau ◽  
Cécile Colin

The analogy between the rules that subtend ventriloquism and bimodal neurons responding suggests a possible neural mechanism for audiovisual interactions in spatial scene analysis. Perinatal data, such as those on synesthesia, sensory deprivation, and sensory surstimulation, as well as neuroanatomical evidence for transitory intersensory connections in the brain support the view that audition and vision are bound together at birth.


1834 ◽  
Vol 124 ◽  
pp. 471-483 ◽  

The difficulties which attend the investigation of the structure and functions of the brain are shown by the ineffective labours of two thousand years; and the first en­deavour of the author is to remove the idea of presumption that attaches to the very title of this paper. Perhaps the enumeration of some of the sources of error which have retarded discovery may be the best introduction and apology. The first impediment to success is in the nature of the inquiry, since extraordinary and contradictory results must be expected from experimenting on an organ so fine as that must be which ministers to sensibility and motion, and which is subject to change on every impression conveyed through the senses. This remarkable suscep­tibility is exemplified in what we often witness; extraordinary results, such as violent convulsions and excruciating pain, from causes which appear quite inadequate. For example, the presence of a minute spicula of bone which has penetrated to the brain, will at one time be attended with no consequence at all; at another it will occasion a deep coma, or loss both of sensibility and motion. Nay, symptoms apparently as formidable will be produced by slight irritation on remote nerves. Seeing these con­tradictory effects, is it reasonable to expect constant and satisfactory results from experiments in which deep wounds are inflicted on the brain of animals, or portions of it torn away ?


Author(s):  
Lotfi Merabet ◽  
Alvaro Pascual-Leone

In the brain, information from all the senses interacts and is integrated in order to create a unified sensory percept. Some percepts appear unimodal, and some, cross modal. Unimodal percepts can be modified by crossmodal interactions given that our brains process multiple streams of sensory information in parallel and promote extensive interactions. TMS can provide valuable insights on the neural substrates associated with multisensory processing in humans. TMS is commonly described as a ‘relatively painless’ method of stimulating the brain noninvasively. However, TMS itself is strong multisensory and this should be considered while interpreting the results. With regard to the crossmodal sensory changes that follow sensory deprivation, these changes can be revealed using a variety of methods including the combination of TMS with neuroimaging.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 383-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Zuanazzi ◽  
Uta Noppeney

Abstract Attention (i.e., task relevance) and expectation (i.e., signal probability) are two critical top-down mechanisms guiding perceptual inference. Attention prioritizes processing of information that is relevant for observers’ current goals. Prior expectations encode the statistical structure of the environment. Research to date has mostly conflated spatial attention and expectation. Most notably, the Posner cueing paradigm manipulates spatial attention using probabilistic cues that indicate where the subsequent stimulus is likely to be presented. Only recently have studies attempted to dissociate the mechanisms of attention and expectation and characterized their interactive (i.e., synergistic) or additive influences on perception. In this review, we will first discuss methodological challenges that are involved in dissociating the mechanisms of attention and expectation. Second, we will review research that was designed to dissociate attention and expectation in the unisensory domain. Third, we will review the broad field of crossmodal endogenous and exogenous spatial attention that investigates the impact of attention across the senses. This raises the critical question of whether attention relies on amodal or modality-specific mechanisms. Fourth, we will discuss recent studies investigating the role of both spatial attention and expectation in multisensory perception, where the brain constructs a representation of the environment based on multiple sensory inputs. We conclude that spatial attention and expectation are closely intertwined in almost all circumstances of everyday life. Yet, despite their intimate relationship, attention and expectation rely on partly distinct neural mechanisms: while attentional resources are mainly shared across the senses, expectations can be formed in a modality-specific fashion.


Genes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 654
Author(s):  
Edgar Soria-Gómez
Keyword(s):  

The senses dictate how the brain represents the environment, and this representation is the basis of how we act in the world [...]


2010 ◽  
pp. 369-402
Author(s):  
Judson Wright

Culture is a byproduct of our brains. Moreover, we’ll look at ways culture also employs ritual (from shamanistic practices to grocery shopping) to shape neural paths, and thus shape our brains. Music has a definite (well researched) role in this feedback loop. The ear learns how to discern music from noise in the very immediate context of the environment. This serves more than entertainment purposes however. At a glance, we often can discern visual noise from images, nonsense from words. The dynamics are hardly unique to audial compositions. There are many kinds of compositional rules that apply to all of the senses and well beyond. The brain develops these rule sets specific to the needs of the culture and in order to maintain it. These rules, rarely articulated, are stored in the form of icons, a somewhat abstracted, context-less abbreviation open to wide interpretation. It may seem somewhat amazing we can come up with compatible rules, by reading these icons from our unique personal perspectives. And often we don’t, as we each have differing tastes and opinions. However, “drawing from the same well” defines abstract groupings, to which we choose to subscribe. We both subscribe to and influence which rule-sets we use to filter our perceptions and conclusions. But the way we (often unconsciously) choose is far more elusive and subtle.


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