Info for Revitalizationists

Wed Oct 31 15:50:25 UTC 2007

Hi, Folks, 

This article came in today, serendipity being what it is. It strongly
implies that if we want to be successful in our efforts to save and teach
languages, we need to have the sound occurring simultaneously with the
graphical information. I use both images and text, but some people
separately present images and text. What this article is saying is that
simultaneous presentation of sound will produce a better result :-) 

Mia 

  _____  

From: MindBrain at yahoogroups.com [mailto:MindBrain at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Robert Karl Stonjek
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 8:57 PM
To: Mind and Brain; Cognitive NeuroScience
Subject: [Mind and Brain] Article: Sight, Sound Processed Together and
Earlier than Previously Thought

Sight, Sound Processed Together and Earlier than Previously Thought 

The area of the brain that processes sounds entering the ears also appears
to process stimulus entering the eyes, providing a novel explanation for why
many viewers believe that ventriloquists have thrown their voices to the
mouths of their dummies.

More generally, these findings from Duke University Medical Center offer new
insights into how the brain takes in and assembles a multitude of stimuli
from the outside world. By studying monkeys, the researchers found that
auditory and visual information is processed together before the combined
signals make it to the brain's cortex, the analytical portion of the brain
that assembles the stimuli from all the senses into coherent thoughts. 

"The prevailing wisdom among brain scientists has been that each of the five
senses - sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste - is governed by its own
corresponding region of the brain," said Jennifer Groh, Ph.D., a
neurobiologist in Duke's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. "The view has
been that each of these areas processes the information separately and sends
that information to the cortex, which puts it all together at the end. 

"Now, we are beginning to appreciate that it's not that simple," Groh
continued. "Our results show that there are interactions between the sensory
pathways that occur very early in the process, which implies that the
integration of the different senses may be a more primitive process and one
not requiring high-level brain functioning." 

The results of Groh's experiments were published early online in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Groh has a particular interest in a tiny round structure in the brain known
as the inferior colliculus. This structure, less than a half-inch in
diameter, is located in the most primitive area of the brain. It is one of
several early stops in the brain for signals leaving the ear, headed for the
cortex. 

"In our experiments, we found that this structure, which had been assumed to
mainly process auditory information, actually responds to visual information
as well," Groh explained. "In fact, about 64 percent of the neurons in the
inferior colliculus can carry visual as well as auditory signals. This means
that visual and auditory information gets combined quite early, and before
the 'thinking part' of the brain can make sense of it." 

That is why ventriloquism seems to work, she said. The association between
the voice and the moving mouth of the dummy is made before the viewer
consciously thinks about it. The same process may also explain why the words
being spoken by a talking head on television appear to be coming out of the
mouth, even though the television speakers are located to the side of the
set. 

"The eyes see the lips moving and the ears hear the sound and the brain
immediately jumps to the conclusion about the origin of the voice," Groh
said. 

Groh said that it makes logical sense for hearing and vision to have some
level of integration in the monkeys she studied, and in humans. 

"We generally live in similar ecological niches; we are active during the
day and tend to communicate vocally," she said. "The inferior colliculus is
similar in both species, and with the advent of new imaging technology, like
functional MRI, which can visualize brain regions in real time. We should be
able to correlate what we're seeing in animal models with what happens in
humans." 

Groh and her team are now conducting experiments to determine whether or not
one of the senses influences how the other is perceived. 

Source: Duke University

http://www.physorg. <http://www.physorg.com/news112982731.html>
com/news112982731.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

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