Rethinking mind, brain and behaviour through a multisensory perspective

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_80C3F32F110F
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Rethinking mind, brain and behaviour through a multisensory perspective
Journal
Neuropsychologia
Author(s)
Pavani Francesco, Murray Micah M., Schroeder Charles E.
ISSN
0028-3932
Publication state
Published
Issued date
01/2007
Volume
45
Number
3
Pages
467-468
Language
english
Abstract
Much of the work of cognitive neuroscientists is based on the idea that the functional architecture of the mind can be described in terms of modules. An influential discussion of what the term module means is to be found in Fodor's seminal book “The Modularity of Mind” (1983). Modules are cognitive systems that only respond to a particular class of stimuli, are neurally specific, innately specified, fast and operate in a mandatory manner. In addition, they need not refer to other cognitive systems to operate (in Fodor's terminology they are ‘informationally-encapsulated’) and therefore function in an essentially autonomous fashion. From this perspective, early sensory systems have typically been conceived as the quintessential modules. They were thought to deal with information from a single sensory modality at a time, within neurally specific and innately specified structures, and in a highly autonomous and ‘informationally encapsulated’ fashion. However, mounting evidence from research on brain mechanisms of multisensory integration is now challenging this view. Neuroanatomical and neurophysiological studies in non-human primates, as well as functional imaging and event-related potential studies in humans clearly suggest that the neural basis of the integration between the senses extends into the earliest stages of cortical sensory processing (see Ghazanfar & Schroeder, 2006 for a recent review). These recent developments are forcing cognitive neuroscientists rethink several of the assumptions about mind, brain, and behaviour—including the most common conceptions about modularity. While it has been always intuitively evident that the traditional approach of focusing on single sensory modalities at a time departed from the real-world experience in which perception and behaviour is driven by streams of input from multiple sensory sources, it is now empirically evident that cognitive neuroscientists should “abandon the notion that the senses ever operate independently during real-world cognition” (Ghazanfar & Schroeder, 2006, p. 278).
Keywords
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience
Web of science
Create date
22/01/2020 17:01
Last modification date
20/01/2021 7:26
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