I am glad that you bring in this "systems' view, and also point out that as
signals move up the system in plants interaction between pathways takes
place. I think this is useful as it places the emphasis on how the system
creates a percept/reaction rather than on the input devices. we tend to
focus on the senses but as you
state the action is at the back end not the front end of the system (maybe
sex is a counterexample)
Similarly your point about thresholds, and the role of memory in priming
recall.
There was an interesting conference in the PLAISIR conferences organised by
Zeki at Berkeley
http://plaisir.berkeley.edu/conference3/speakers.htm
<http://plaisir.berkeley.edu/conference3/speakers.htm>On Emotions in Art and
the Brain= there are a number of interesting papers there that
talk about how anticipation in the brain primes, and can modify thresholds,
of the senses
( yes wine really does taste different neurobiologically if you think its
chateau rothschild
rather than plonk)
the senses indeed are not equal and interact at different points in
differing ways
as you go up the cognitive process ( smell and taste interact differently
than
vision and sound)
i think the systems view you emphasise is also because it also brings in the
issue
of how other senses ( eg the sense of balance) also are important in helping
structure
how the senses cross couple= as we grow up in the world of one gravity, the
up and down
sense structurse the whole visual cognition process ( as the upside down
faces illusion
illustrates) if we grew up in a world of zero gravity, our visual cortex
would develop in
different ways-
the sense of gravity is important in other ways= the fact that you always
feel "down'
on the balls of your feet, or your rear end when you sit- the sense of touch
also
then "primes' and alters the thresholds in other senses. Thats why a ride in
a roller
coaster where you experience variable gravity is so disorienting/thrilling
because
the variable gravity destabilises the other sensory processes.
roger
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 5:05 AM, Ian Ferguson <
Ian.Ferguson@plantandfood.co.nz> wrote:
> Ian again
>
> I
>
> Much of the dicussion has been around multisensory perception. This is
> interesting from our perspective since the connectivity that we have been
> talking about doesnt occur at the front end of sensory perception, but at
> the processing end in the brain. The same occurs in all organisms, whether
> they are neuronal or not - plant hormones interact - but only downstream
> once genes have been turned on - the connectivity is more at the level of
> genes from one pathway promoting activity in another. Its probably the same
> with our senses.
>
>
>
> Ian
>
> ________________________________
>
>
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