From: "Chris Lofting" <ddiamond@ozemail.com.au>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Differentiation/Merging of the senses
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 17:47:30 +1000
-----Original Message-----
From: Gatherer, D. (Derek) <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl>
To: 'memetics@mmu.ac.uk' <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Date: Friday, 3 September 1999 5:09
Subject: RE: Differentiation/Merging of the senses
>>Derek:
>>I am sceptical concerning synaesthesia.
>
>Chris:
>OK.. how much reading have you done on it?
>
>Derek:
>A fair amount, although I don't claim to be an expert. I've never read
>anything that convinced me that it is anything other than a hallucination,
>rather like an LSD-induced state. I don't buy
>a) that it is a "normal" state in infants
>b) that it is somehow deeply meaningful with respect to the theory of the
>brain
>
>As I said before, people claim to see all sorts of strange things. Why
>synaethesia should be elevated to some kind of special case has always
>puzzled me.
>
Which aspect do you reject -
(a) that we start-off with undifferentiated sensory processing that then
becomes refined through exposure to nurture?
(b) that we end-up creating hybrid expressions of meaning based on the
entanglement of sensory data?
(c) all of the above
does the 'fact' that sensory specific areas of the brain, if not exposed to
their particular sense bias (e.g. due to blindness, deafness etc) are
recruited by surrounding networks for different tasks? Doesnt this
demonstrate the undifferentiated form of the brain in early development? One
example of this was the forceable closure of an eye during the first few
weeks of life (in monkey). Later examination of the visual cortex showed
that the network used by the other eye enchroached on and 'stole' parts of
the network for the closed eye.
Another example was in the amputation of a finger whereupon the neural
network area specifically sensitive to that finger was distributed amongst
surrounding areas.
These observations manifest a plasticity 'in here' that would include
'entanglements' where lack of exposure to sensory data reduces
particularisation and the areas concerned are returned to a general state
that lets them be recruited by near-by specialist regions.
In this context, the newborn infant has a brain that is 'general' in form
when compared to later particularisations due to nurture. The
object/relationship distinctions, the what/where mappings, are there but not
yet refined such that the border between them is not sharply defined, there
are entanglements where a neuron or network of neurons are in a 'general'
state and this general state is manifest as synaesthesia.
Reasonable?
Chris.
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit