Making Sense of the Senses

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-185
Author(s):  
Alan J. McComas
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
Sensory System ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The One

This chapter describes the novel findings of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel when recording from single cells in the primary visual cortex and how these findings supported the concept that the various features of the observed image underwent independent processing in parallel. Of the various sensory systems, the one about which most is known is the visual one. Vision is also the most complex sensory system, which is reflected in its large cortical territory. The chapter thus focuses on the sense of sight in particular as it explores the findings of Hubel and Wiesel. However, the chapter also presents an alternative to the now-classic Hubel–Wiesel scheme, one that, despite its fundamental differences, seems equally plausible.

Reading, Listening, and Performing in Wilhelm Heinse’s Hildegard von Hohenthal (1796)

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 502-529
Author(s):  
Thomas Irvine
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Senses ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
Musical Listening

Early in Wilhelm Heinse’s eccentric novel Hildegard von Hohenthal (1796) his characters confront the problem of how music works on the senses. The novel’s hero, Kapellmeister Lockmann, tunes a piano—to an idiosyncratic temperament of his own invention—as he proposes an intensely physical model for musical listening. He uses this demonstration, while simultaneously trying to start a love affair with the novel’s heroine, Hildegard von Hohenthal, to reclaim older ideas about natural temperaments and key characteristics in an era of heightened interest in the anatomy of cognition. But Heinse’s own opinions are not always the same as those of his characters. Drawing on his notebooks, I trace how Heinse struggled to come to terms with opposing views of his friend and colleague, the anatomist Samuel Thomas Soemmering, and of the philosopher Immanuel Kant of how sound affects the body. Soemmering’s Über das Organ der Seele (1796) and Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (1790) both act as intertexts and paratexts to the novel, and Heinse more than once splits his own opinions about both books between his characters. The tuning scene addresses important questions about the hierarchy of the senses, the creation of musical meaning, and the freedom of performers and listeners to form their own interpretations of music. Heinse’s naturalist ideas about musical agency rub against the grain of a narrative—still current today—dominated by a transaction between heroic composers on the one side and awe-struck listeners on the other. To re-assess these ideas is to re-imagine a crucial hinge in music history.

scholarly journals Semantic Grounding of Novel Spoken Words in the Primary Visual Cortex

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Garagnani ◽  
Evgeniya Kirilina ◽  
Friedemann Pulvermüller
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Familiar Object ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Spoken Words ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Brain

Embodied theories of grounded semantics postulate that, when word meaning is first acquired, a link is established between symbol (word form) and corresponding semantic information present in modality-specific—including primary—sensorimotor cortices of the brain. Direct experimental evidence documenting the emergence of such a link (i.e., showing that presentation of a previously unknown, meaningless word sound induces, after learning, category-specific reactivation of relevant primary sensory or motor brain areas), however, is still missing. Here, we present new neuroimaging results that provide such evidence. We taught participants aspects of the referential meaning of previously unknown, senseless novel spoken words (such as “Shruba” or “Flipe”) by associating them with either a familiar action or a familiar object. After training, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to analyze the participants’ brain responses to the new speech items. We found that hearing the newly learnt object-related word sounds selectively triggered activity in the primary visual cortex, as well as secondary and higher visual areas.These results for the first time directly document the formation of a link between the novel, previously meaningless spoken items and corresponding semantic information in primary sensory areas in a category-specific manner, providing experimental support for perceptual accounts of word-meaning acquisition in the brain.

scholarly journals Describing complex cells in primary visual cortex: a comparison of context and multifilter LN models

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 703-719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Westö ◽  
Patrick J. C. May
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Receptive Field ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Correlation Coefficients ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Context Model ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Complex Cells ◽  
Context Models

Receptive field (RF) models are an important tool for deciphering neural responses to sensory stimuli. The two currently popular RF models are multifilter linear-nonlinear (LN) models and context models. Models are, however, never correct, and they rely on assumptions to keep them simple enough to be interpretable. As a consequence, different models describe different stimulus-response mappings, which may or may not be good approximations of real neural behavior. In the current study, we take up two tasks: 1) we introduce new ways to estimate context models with realistic nonlinearities, that is, with logistic and exponential functions, and 2) we evaluate context models and multifilter LN models in terms of how well they describe recorded data from complex cells in cat primary visual cortex. Our results, based on single-spike information and correlation coefficients, indicate that context models outperform corresponding multifilter LN models of equal complexity (measured in terms of number of parameters), with the best increase in performance being achieved by the novel context models. Consequently, our results suggest that the multifilter LN-model framework is suboptimal for describing the behavior of complex cells: the context-model framework is clearly superior while still providing interpretable quantizations of neural behavior. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We used data from complex cells in primary visual cortex to estimate a wide variety of receptive field models from two frameworks that have previously not been compared with each other. The models included traditionally used multifilter linear-nonlinear models and novel variants of context models. Using mutual information and correlation coefficients as performance measures, we showed that context models are superior for describing complex cells and that the novel context models performed the best.

Mechanisms of Wonder: The Performance of Marvels in Don Quixote Part II

2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA COLE
Keyword(s):  
Don Quixote ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Secondary Characters ◽  
The One

As many Cervantistas have explained, Don Quixote’s imagined reality in Part II of Don Quixote is markedly different from the one presented in Part I of the novel. His adventures are no longer solely the result of his own imagination, but rather carefully crafted and manipulated by secondary characters in the work, perhaps most notably by the duke and duchess. One thing that has not been so well explained in prior criticism, however, is that intimately tied to this manipulation is the production of marvels and spectacular performances. These marvels are objects that arouse the emotion of wonder in their audiences. Each of the three episodes under study involves inanimate objects that seem to possess animacy. Through the presentation of these marvels, Cervantes shows that the intentional manipulation of the senses is an important aspect of producing wonder, for it helps to keep hidden the cause behind the seemingly marvellous object.

Area Summation in Human Visual System: Psychophysics, fMRI, and Modeling

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (5) ◽  
pp. 2900-2909 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauri Nurminen ◽  
Markku Kilpeläinen ◽  
Pentti Laurinen ◽  
Simo Vanni
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Receptive Field ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
Sine Wave ◽  
Field Structure ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Neural Population ◽  
Contextual Modulation

Contextual modulation is a fundamental feature of sensory processing, both on perceptual and on single-neuron level. When the diameter of a visual stimulus is increased, the firing rate of a cell typically first increases (summation field) and then decreases (surround field). Such an area summation function draws a comprehensive profile of the receptive field structure of a neuron, including areas outside the classical receptive field. We investigated area summation in human vision with psychophysics and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The stimuli were similar to those used drifting sine wave gratings in previous macaque single-cell area summation studies. A model was developed to facilitate comparison of area summation in fMRI to area summation in psychophysics and single cells. The model consisted of units with an antagonistic receptive field structure found in single cells in the primary visual cortex. The receptive field centers of the model neurons were distributed in the region of the visual field covered by a single voxel. The measured area summation functions were qualitatively similar to earlier single-cell data. The model with parameters derived from psychophysics captured the spatial structure of the summation field in the primary visual cortex as measured with fMRI. The model also generalized to a novel situation in which the neural population was displaced from the stimulus center. The current study shows that contextual modulation arises from similar spatially antagonistic and overlapping excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms, both in single cells and in human vision.

scholarly journals SacY, a Transcriptional Antiterminator fromBacillus subtilis, Is Regulated by Phosphorylation In Vivo

1998 ◽  
Vol 180 (3) ◽  
pp. 660-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Idelson ◽  
Orna Amster-Choder
Keyword(s):  
Escherichia Coli ◽  
Bacillus Subtilis ◽  
Growth Medium ◽  
Sensory System ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reversible Phosphorylation ◽  
Homologous Protein ◽  
Negative Effect

ABSTRACT SacY antiterminates transcription of the sacB gene inBacillus subtilis in response to the presence of sucrose in the growth medium. We have found that it can substitute for BglG, a homologous protein, in antiterminating transcription of thebgl operon in Escherichia coli. We therefore sought to determine whether, similarly to BglG, SacY is regulated by reversible phosphorylation in response to the availability of the inducing sugar. We show here that two forms of SacY, phosphorylated and nonphosphorylated, exist in B. subtilis cells and that the ratio between them depends on the external level of sucrose. Addition of sucrose to the growth medium after SacY phosphorylation in the cell resulted in its rapid dephosphorylation. The extent of SacY phosphorylation was found to be proportional to the cellular levels of SacX, a putative sucrose permease which was previously shown to have a negative effect on SacY activity. Thus, the mechanism by which thesac sensory system modulates sacB expression in response to sucrose involves reversible phosphorylation of the regulator SacY, and this process appears to depend on the SacX sucrose sensor. The sac system is therefore a member of the novel family of sensory systems represented by bgl.

Elementy poetyki ludowej w powieści Rzeczy uprzyjemniające. Utopia T. Bołdak-Janowskiej

2020 ◽  
pp. 182-197
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Goral
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The One ◽  
Cultural Features

The aim of the article is to analyse the elements of folk poetics in the novel Pleasant things. Utopia by T. Bołdak-Janowska. The category of folklore is understood in a rather narrow way, and at the same time it is most often used in critical and literary works as meaning a set of cultural features (customs and rituals, beliefs and rituals, symbols, beliefs and stereotypes) whose carrier is the rural folk. The analysis covers such elements of the work as place, plot, heroes, folk system of values, folk rituals, customs, and symbols. The description is conducted based on the analysis of source material as well as selected works in the field of literary text analysis and ethnolinguistics. The analysis shows that folk poetics was creatively associated with the elements of fairy tales and fantasy in the studied work, and its role consists of – on the one hand – presenting the folk world represented and – on the other – presenting a message about the meaning of human existence.

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