bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
NOTA SU ALCUNI STRUMENTI RECENTEMENTE ACQUISITI DALLA FONDAZIONE SCIENZA E TECNICA
Authors: BRENNI PAOLO
Published: November 2012

The collection of the 19th century physics instruments of the Istituto Tecnico Toscano in Florence, which is nowadays preserved by the Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica, is one of the largest and more complete in Europe. For this reason it can be considered a closed collection. Nevertheless in the last years a few specific instruments were acquired by the Fondazione in order to fill some gaps in the various sections of the collection. This article describe these instruments, which are not mentioned in the printed catalogues.
I PUNTI DI ZENONE: UNA PREISTORIA VICHIANA
Authors: ROSSI PAOLO
Published: November 2012

title SUMMARY /title This study considers the reasons for the radical incompatibility between atomist theses and the conclusions reached by the Council of Trent on the sacrament of the Eucharist. The texts of several seventeenth century Jesuits - Suarez, Pereira, Arriaga and Oviedo - are examined here. Present in these texts is an attempt to develop a natural philosophy alternative to the Aristotelian one, capable of retaining its distance from impious atomism, but, nonetheless, adopting certain central aspects concerning belief in discontinuity and indivisibles. A strong line of demarcation between Aristotelians and anti-Aristotelians can be traced through their differing conceptions of the continuum. Zenonism (which regards the continuum as composed of points) was defended on various occasions in the Jesuit context, and was also repressed and condemned a number of times. In the background to these problems, the atomism of Galileo is reconsidered, and the "atomism of points" described theoretically by Boscovich is examined. Even during the seventeenth century, however, mention was frequently made of a particular type of atomists who regarded atoms as without extension. Many Vico scholars regarded his profession of Zenonims (central to his De antiquissima of 1710) as a "philosophical invention of Vico". In reality, however, Vico had a Zenonist Jesuit as his teacher, and his entire discussion of "metaphysical points" is linked to a specific and very little known philosophical tradition. In the whole of Europe between the middle of the seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth century, Zenonist was a term in common use, and was readly comprehensible, like Scotist, or, in more recent times, Popperian.
ELEMENTS FOR THE RELATIVE CHRONOLOGY OF GALILEI'S DE MOTU ANTIQUIORA
Authors: GIUSTI ENRICO
Published: November 2012

title RIASSUNTO /title L'ordine di composizione dei quattro testi raccolti sotto il nome collettivo di DE MOTU ANTIQUIORA stato oggetto di discussione tra gli studiosi galileiani, che hanno proposto differenti soluzioni. Sulla base di un confronto dettagliato dei passi comuni a due o pi degli scritti in questione, si portano dei nuovi argomenti a sostegno della successione Dialogo, Trattato in 23 capitoli, Trattato in 2 capitoli, Trattato in 10 capitoli.
PER UN ARCHIVIO DELLA CORRISPONDENZA DEGLI SCIENZIATI ITALIANI
Authors: CICENIA SALVATORE
Published: November 2012

title SUMMARY /title In the present paper six letters by E. Beltrami addressed to A. Genocchi on non Euclidean geometry are examined.
VORLESUNGEN BER SPEZIELLE RELATIVITTSTHEORIE
Authors: EINSTEIN ALBERT
Published: November 2012

title RIASSUNTO /title Il manoscritto einsteiniano del 1920 dal titolo: Vorlesungen ber spezielle Relativittstheorie, illustra in modo paradigmatico l'intera gestazione della Teoria della Relativit speciale, l'importanza e il ruolo di questa all'interno della Teoria della Relativit generale, il passaggio da una Teoria della Relativit speciale ad una generale, i dubbi e le certezze del suo inventore, sempre nell'ottica di uno dei nodi cruciali della Storia della Fisica moderna: il problema della definizione dell'Etere. La Teoria dell'Etere, appunto, filtrata attraverso Hendrik A. Lorentz, diventa in Einstein una fattispecie inerziale del Principio di Relativit classico e poi, spogliandosi di qualsiasi qualit meccanica, diviene Teoria gravitazionale nella prospettiva fenomenologica weyliana.
CORRISPONDENZA DI GIOVANNI BATTISTA AMICI CON CARLO MATTEUCCI E ANGELO SECCHI*
Authors: MESCHIARI ALBERTO
Published: November 2012

title SUMMARY /title We here publish 28 letters from the correspondence of Giovanni Battista Amici, belonging to the Estense Library in Modena, concerning his relationship with two of the greatest Italian scientists of the XIX century: Carlo Matteucci and Angelo Secchi.
What Became of the New Public Diplomacy? Recent Developments in British, US and Swedish Public Diplomacy Policy and Evaluation Methods
Authors: Pamment James
Published: November 2012

Summary

This article examines the relationship between theories of the ‘new’ public diplomacy and recent attempts by foreign ministries in the United Kingdom, United States and Sweden to develop public diplomacy strategies for the early twenty-first century. It provides a summary of policy debates in each nation alongside analysis of the evaluation methods that have been designed to support them. The article argues that expressions of a new public diplomacy are best explained within the constraints of different institutional and national cultures. Innovations in public diplomacy have typically taken place within the context of domestic demands for public accountability and value for money, pressures for empirical data to inform policy-making, and the increased centralization of public diplomacy activities. Evaluation plays an important role in improving actors’ capacities for newer forms of public diplomacy, but often by measuring the public diplomacy institution and its objectives, rather than whether the needs of foreign publics are met. This suggests that any paradigm shift from old to new public diplomacy has in practice centred on domestic and organizational concerns rather than the achievement of normative goals such as increased dialogue with foreign citizens.
Dewey: A Pragmatist View of History
Authors: Grigoriev Serge
Published: November 2012

Abstract

Despite the centrality of the idea of history to Dewey’s overall philosophical outlook, his brief treatment of philosophical issues in history has never attracted much attention, partly because of the dearth of the available material. Nonetheless, as argued in this essay, what we do have provides an outline of a comprehensive pragmatist view of history distinguished by an emphasis on methodological pluralism and a principled opposition to thinking of historical knowledge in correspondence terms. The key conceptions of Dewey’s philosophy of history discussed in this paper – i.e. historical constitution of human nature, constructivist ontology of historical events, as well as the belief that the proper form of historical judgments is underwritten by the category of continual change – are discussed with a view to the current challenges in philosophy of history, e.g. the contest between naturalism and rationalism, objectivity and relativism, questions surrounding the function of narrative in history, and the relationship of history to the problems of identity and self-knowledge. The intended upshot of the essay is to suggest that Dewey’s brief yet substantial analysis may be capable of supplying the guiding principles for articulating a viable and promising pragmatist (and naturalist) conception of historical knowledge.
Is History New? Recent Modernist Interpretations of Hegel
Authors: Bernstein Jeffrey A.
Published: November 2012

Abstract

This review explores a recent trend in commentary on Hegel’s philosophy of history which owes much of its interpretive substance to the aesthetic modernism of the Frankfurt School. This modernist trend emphasizes the interplay of form and content, material conditions of rationality, and the temporal disjunction between experiencing and cognizing history. In so doing, it produces a deeply political, psychoanalytic, and musical reading of Hegel.
Among the Believers in the Land of the Colonizer: Mohammed Ali van Beetem’s Role Among the Indonesian Community in the Netherlands in the Interwar Period*
Authors: Ryad Umar
Published: November 2012

On the basis of fresh documents, the paper deals with the Dutch convert to Islam Mohammed Ali van Beetem (d. 1938), who travelled to Egypt in 1934 and established ties with Muslim reformists, such as Muhhib al-Din al-Khatib (1886–1969). It sheds new light on Van Beetem’s leading role among Indonesian communities in the Netherlands, his conversion to Islam, his attempts to establish a mosque and a Muslim graveyard in The Hague, his relations with Muslim reformists, and participation in the first European Muslim Congress in Geneva under the auspices of the Druze Prince Shakib Arslan in 1935.
Protection Norms and Human Rights: A Rights-Based Analysis of the Responsibility to Protect and the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict
Authors: Breakey Hugh
Published: November 2012

In the international context, human rights are rarely secured by the black letter of law, but rather by the soft laws, political policies and moral prescriptions of protection norms. Two key international protection norms are the well-established Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (PoC) and – recently added in the last decade – the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). Yet there is substantial confusion about the specific nature of these two norms, their relationship to one another, and their relationship to the human rights that are held to ground and shape each of them. These questions are complex not merely because there are several distinct PoC norms, nor because all these norms differ one from another. The complexity arises because the relevant differences apply to separate dimensions of each norm. In this way it is possible for a norm to be in one sense narrower than another, yet in another sense to be deeper, and in distinct further senses to be both broader and weaker. With such intricacies in mind, this paper develops a five-dimensional rights-based analysis of norms and uses it to differentiate RtoP from three separate PoC norms, and to illustrate the distinct ways each protection norm provides multi-layered rights protection.
Scrap Metal Intended for Metal Production: The Thin Line between Waste and Products
Authors: de Sadeleer Nicolas
Published: November 2012

The authorities regularly have to cross swords with businesses on the issue as to whether a given substance has been completely recovered in order to escape the Caudine Forks of waste law. So far, it has been settled case law that national lawmakers could not adopt a definition of the notion of waste that would exclude objects and substances capable of commercial re-use. However, economic operators consider that the relatively broad definition of waste under Union law does not embrace all of the special features of their economic activities. By adopting the new Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC, the EU lawmaker sought to tailor the Directive’s scope in the best possible manner, in particular in providing for new arrangements under which certain classes of waste cease to be classified as such. In effect, in virtue of its Article 6 (1) and (2), certain specified waste shall cease to be waste when it has undergone a recovery operation and complies with specific criteria. Such criteria should be set for specific materials by the Commission in comitology. In this connection, the Council adopted Regulation (EU) No. 333/2011 on certain types of scrap metal which sets forth the criteria which make it possible to determine the time when certain types of scrap metal—iron, steel and aluminium—cease to be waste within the meaning of Directive 2008/98/EC where such scrap is intended for the metal production in steelworks, foundries and aluminium refiners. It is the aim of this article to explore some of the questions that the first regulation to implement Article 6 of the Directive is likely to raise.
Anzomyia (Diptera: Tabanidae: Pangoniinae: Scionini): a new genus of Australian and New Zealand horse fly, including the description of three new species
Authors: Lessard Bryan D. , Yeates David K.
Published: November 2012

A new genus of Australian and New Zealand horse fly, Anzomyia Lessard, gen.n., is described, with its type species Anzomyia anomala (Mackerras) originally placed in the Scaptia (Walker, 1850) subgenus Pseudoscione (Lutz, 1918). The new genus Anzomyia is diagnosed and illustrated, along with the description of three new species. A taxonomic key is also provided to include all known species. The three new species are Anzomyia chrysomallis Lessard, sp.n. and Anzomyia pegasus Lessard, sp.n. from Australia, and Anzomyia herculensis Lessard, sp.n. from New Zealand.
Single-object consistency facilitates multisensory pair learning: Evidence for unitization
Authors: Barenholtz Elan , Lewkowicz David J. , Kogelschatz Lauren
Published: November 2012

Learning about objects often involves associating multisensory properties such as the taste and smell of a food or the face and voice of a person. Here, we report a novel phenomenon in associative learning in which pairs of multisensory attributes that are consistent with deriving from a single object are learned better than pairs that are not. In Experiment 1, we found superior learning of arbitrary pairs of human faces and voices when they were gender-congruent — and thus were consistent with belonging to a single personal identity — compared with gender-incongruent pairs. In Experiment 2, we found a similar advantage when the learned pair consisted of species-congruent animal pictures and vocalizations vs. species-incongruent pairs. In Experiment 3, we found that temporal synchrony — which provides a highly reliable alternative cue that properties derive from a single object — improved performance specifically for the incongruent pairs. Together, these findings demonstrate a novel principle in associative learning in which multisensory pairs that are consistent with having a single object as their source are learned more easily than multisensory pairs that are not. These results suggest that unitizing multisensory properties into a single representation may be a specialized learning mechanism.
Assessing audiovisual saliency and visual-information content in the articulation of consonants and vowels on audiovisual temporal perception
Authors: Vatakis Argiro , Spence Charles
Published: November 2012

Research has revealed different temporal integration windows between and within different speech-tokens. The limited speech-tokens tested to date has not allowed for the proper evaluation of whether such differences are task or stimulus driven? We conducted a series of experiments to investigate how the physical differences associated with speech articulation affect the temporal aspects of audiovisual speech perception. Videos of consonants and vowels uttered by three speakers were presented. Participants made temporal order judgments (TOJs) regarding which speech-stream had been presented first. The sensitivity of participants’ TOJs and the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) were analyzed as a function of the place, manner of articulation, and voicing for consonants, and the height/backness of the tongue and lip-roundedness for vowels. The results demonstrated that for the case of place of articulation/roundedness, participants were more sensitive to the temporal order of highly-salient speech-signals with smaller visual-leads at the PSS. This was not the case when the manner of articulation/height was evaluated. These findings suggest that the visual-speech signal provides substantial cues to the auditory-signal that modulate the relative processing times required for the perception of the speech-stream. A subsequent experiment explored how the presentation of different sources of visual-information modulated such findings. Videos of three consonants were presented under natural and point-light (PL) viewing conditions revealing parts, or the whole, face. Preliminary analysis revealed no differences in TOJ accuracy under different viewing conditions. However, the PSS data revealed significant differences in viewing conditions depending on the speech token uttered (e.g., larger visual-leads for PL-lip/teeth/tongue-only views).
Somatosensory amplification and illusory tactile sensations
Authors: Lakhlani Vrushant , McKenzie Kirsten J.
Published: November 2012

Experimental studies have demonstrated that it is possible to induce convincing bodily distortions in neurologically healthy individuals, through cross-modal manipulations; such as the rubber hand illusion (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998), the parchment skin illusion (Jousmaki and Hari, 1998) and the Somatic Signal Detection Task (SSDT; Lloydet al., 2008). It has been shown previously with the SSDT that when a tactile stimulus is presented with a simultaneous light flash, individuals show both increased sensitivity to the tactile stimulus, and the tendency to report feeling the stimulus even when one was not presented; a tendency which varies greatly between individuals but remains constant over time within an individual (McKenzieet al., 2010). Further studies into tactile stimulus discrimination using the Somatic Signal Discrimination Task (SSDiT) have also shown that a concurrent light led to a significant improvement in people’s ability to discriminate ‘weak’ tactile stimuli from ‘strong’ ones, as well as a bias towards reporting any tactile stimulus as ‘strong’ (Poliakoffet al., in preparation), indicating that the light may influence both early and later stages of processing. The current study investigated whether the tendency to report higher numbers of false alarms when carrying out the SSDT is correlated with the tendency to experience higher numbers of cross-modal ‘enhancements’ of weak tactile signals (leading to classifications of ‘weak’ stimuli as strong, and ‘strong’ stimuli as ‘stronger’). Results will be discussed.
The hands have it: Hand specific vision of touch enhances touch perception and somatosensory evoked potential
Authors: Malcolm Brenda , Reilly Karen , Mattout Jérémie , Salemme Roméo , Bertrand Olivier , Beauchamp Michael S. , Ro Tony , Farnè Alessandro
Published: November 2012

Our ability to accurately discriminate information from one sensory modality is often influenced by information from the other senses. Previous research indicates that tactile perception on the hand may be enhanced if participants look at a hand (compared to a neutral object) and if visual information about the origin of touch conveys temporal and/or spatial congruency. The current experiment further assessed the effects of non-informative vision on tactile perception. Participants made speeded discrimination responses (digit 2 or digit 5 of their right hand) to supra-threshold electro-cutaneous stimulation while viewing a video showing a pointer, in a static position or moving (dynamic), towards the same or different digit of a hand or to the corresponding spatial location on a non-corporeal object (engine). Therefore, besides manipulating whether a visual contact was spatially congruent to the simultaneously felt touch, we also manipulated the nature of the recipient object (hand vs. engine). Behaviourally, the temporal cues provided by the dynamic visual information about an upcoming touch decreased reaction times. Additionally, a greater enhancement in tactile discrimination was present when participants viewed a spatially congruent contact compared to a spatially incongruent contact. Most importantly, this visually driven improvement was greater for the view-hand condition compared to the view-object condition. Spatially-congruent, hand-specific visual events also produced the greatest amplitude in the P50 somatosensory evoked potential (SEP). We conclude that tactile perception is enhanced when vision provides non-predictive spatio-temporal cues and that these effects are specifically enhanced when viewing a hand.
Hand ownership and hand position in the rubber hand illusion are uncorrelated
Authors: Holmes Nicholas P. , Makin Tamar R. , Cadieux Michelle , Williams Claire , Naish Katherine R. , Spence Charles , Shore David I.
Published: November 2012

The rubber hand illusion (RHI) is a multisensory (visual, tactile, proprioceptive) illusion in which participants report body ownership over, mislocalize actual hand position to, and feel touches applied to, the rubber hand. For many years, researchers have used changes in perceived hand position, measured by inter-manual pointing, as a more objective measure of the illusion than verbal reports alone. Despite this reliance, there is little evidence to show that the illusion of hand ownership is directly related to perceived hand position. We developed an adaptive staircase procedure to measure perceived hand position, and tested whether the RHI affected perceived hand position. In two experiments we found a significant illusion of ownership, as well as significant changes in perceived hand position, but these two measures were uncorrelated. In a third experiment using more typical RHI procedures, we again replicated significant illusions of ownership and changes in hand position, but again the measures were uncorrelated. We conclude that viewing and feeling touches applied to a dummy hand results in clear illusions of ownership and changes in hand position, but via independent mechanisms.
Where’s Wally? Audio–visual mismatch directs ocular saccades in sensory substitution
Authors: Wright Thomas D. , Ward Jamie , Simonon Sarah , Margolis Aaron
Published: November 2012

Sensory substitution is the representation of information from one sensory modality (e.g., vision) within another modality (e.g., audition). We used a visual-to-auditory sensory substitution device (SSD) to explore the effect of incongruous (true-)visual and substituted-visual signals on visual attention. In our multisensory sensory substitution paradigm, both visual and sonified-visual information were presented. By making small alterations to the sonified image, but not the seen image, we introduced audio–visual mismatch. The alterations consisted of the addition of a small image (for instance, the Wally character from the ‘Where’s Wally?’ books) within the original image. Participants were asked to listen to the sonified image and identify which quadrant contained the alteration. Monitoring eye movements revealed the effect of the audio–visual mismatch on covert visual attention. We found that participants consistently fixated more, and dwelled for longer, in the quadrant corresponding to the location (in the sonified image) of the target. This effect was not contingent on the participant reporting the location of the target correctly, which indicates a low-level interaction between an auditory stream and visual attention. We propose that this suggests a shared visual workspace that is accessible by visual sources other than the eyes. If this is indeed the case, it would support the development of other, more esoteric, forms of sensory substitution. These could include an expanded field of view (e.g., rear-view cameras), overlaid visual information (e.g., thermal imaging) or restoration of partial visual field loss (e.g., hemianopsia).
Different classes of audiovisual correspondences are processed at distinct levels of the cortical hierarchy
Authors: Noppeney Uta , Adam Ruth , Sadaghiani Sepideh , Maier Joost X. , Lee HweeLing , Werner Sebastian , Ostwald Dirk , Lewis Richard , Conrad Verena
Published: November 2012

The brain should integrate sensory inputs only when they emanate from a common source and segregate those from different sources. Sensory correspondences are important cues informing the brain whether two sensory inputs are generated by a common event and should hence be integrated. Most prominently, sensory inputs should co-occur in time and space. More complex audiovisual stimuli may also be congruent in terms of semantics (e.g., objects and source sounds) or phonology (e.g., spoken and written words; linked via common linguistic labels). Surprisingly, metaphoric relations (e.g., pitch and height) have also been shown to influence audiovisual integration. The neural mechanisms that mediate these metaphoric congruency effects are only poorly understood. They may be mediated via (i) natural multisensory binding, (ii) common linguistic labels or (iii) semantics. In this talk, we will present a series of studies that investigate whether these different types of audiovisual correspondences are processed by distinct neural systems. Further, we investigate how those systems are employed by metaphoric audiovisual correspondences. Our results demonstrate that different classes of audiovisual correspondences influence multisensory integration at distinct levels of the cortical hierarchy. Spatiotemporal incongruency is detected already at the primary cortical level. Natural (e.g., motion direction) and phonological incongruency influences MSI in areas involved in motion or phonological processing. Critically, metaphoric interactions emerge in neural systems that are shared with natural and semantic incongruency. This activation pattern may reflect the ambivalent nature of metaphoric audiovisual interactions relying on both natural and semantic correspondences.
The development of the bodily self: Children’s responses to the Rubber Hand Illusion
Authors: Cowie Dorothy A.
Published: November 2012

The bodily self is constructed from multisensory information. However, little is known of the relationship between multisensory development and the emerging sense of self. We investigated how multisensory processes underpin the developing sense of bodily self by measuring the strength of the ‘Rubber Hand Illusion’ in young children (4 to 9 years old) and adults. Stroking mode (synchronous vs asynchronous) was varied between subjects. Following this visuotactile stimulation, we measured processes of body localisation using intermanual pointing, and feelings of body ownership using questionnaire responses. Intermanual pointing showed that children were as sensitive as adults to visual-tactile synchrony cues for hand position. Similarly, explicit feelings of embodiment, measured by questionnaire items, were sensitive to visual-tactile integration independent of age. These converging results indicate a visual-tactile pathway to the bodily self which matures by at least 4 years of age. However, regardless of synchrony cues, children’s pointing was more captured by the fake hand than adults, indicating a second, later-maturing process based on visual-proprioceptive information. These findings demonstrate two dissociable processes underlying body representation in early life: an early-maturing visual tactile process controlling hand localisation and ownership, and a later-developing visual-proprioceptive process controlling localisation only. The findings further suggest that hand localisation and ownership may not always be so intimately bound together as adult data would suggest, and therefore call for a reassessment of the systems involved in adult own-body perception.
Multisensory processes in the synaesthetic brain — An event-related potential study in multisensory competition situations
Authors: Neufeld Janina , Sinke Christopher , Wiswede Daniel , Emrich Hinderk M. , Bleich Stefan , Szycik Gregor R.
Published: November 2012

In synaesthesia certain external stimuli (e.g., music) trigger automatically internally generated sensations (e.g., colour). Results of behavioural investigations indicate that multisensory processing works differently in synaesthetes. However, the reasons for these differences and the underlying neural correlates remain unclear. The aim of the current study was to investigate if synaesthetes show differences in electrophysiological components of multimodal processing. Further we wanted to test synaesthetes for an enhanced distractor filtering ability in multimodal situations. Therefore, line drawings of animals and objects were presented to participants, either with congruent (typical sound for presented picture, e.g., picture of bird together with chirp), incongruent (picture of bird together with gun shot) or without simultaneous auditory stimulation. 14 synaesthetes (auditory–visual and grapheme-colour synaesthetes) and 13 controls participated in the study. We found differences in the event-related potentials between synaesthetes and controls, indicating an altered multisensory processing of bimodal stimuli in synaesthetes in competition situations. These differences were especially found over frontal brain sites. An interaction effect between group (synaesthetes vs. controls) and stimulation (unimodal visual vs. congruent multimodal) could not be detected. Therefore we conclude that multisensory processing works in general similar in synaesthetes and controls and that only specifically integration processes in multisensory competition situations are altered in synaesthetes.
That smells blue! Differences between colour associations for odours and odour-evocative words
Authors: McKenzie Kirsten J. , Woods Andrew T. , Leong Christine , Ren Jiana , Chan Jason , Levin Jai , Dodson Michael , Levitan Carmel A.
Published: November 2012

Strong associations exist between specific odours and colours, and these associations have been found to be both consistent within populations and over time (Gilbertet al., 1996). Experimental manipulations of these associations have shown that both taste and odour perception rely heavily upon visual cues (e.g., Blackwell, 1995; Sakaiet al., 2005); participants often make errors in odour judgements when stimuli have been artificially coloured (Morrotet al., 2001), and the presence of a strongly-associated colour can greatly enhance the detection of an odour and the intensity of aromas or flavours (Zellner and Kautz, 1990; Zellner and Whitten, 1999), as well as preference and enjoyment (Herz, 2001; Herz and Beland, 2004). Such associations between colour and odour appear to be based on prior experience (Blackwell, 1995; Morrotet al., 2001; Sakaiet al., 2005; Stevenson and Oaten, 2008), and odours are usually perceived alongside visual, taste and tactile sensations, as well as higher order cues such as shape, size and object labelling. As such, an odour maybe perceived quite differently depending upon its current multisensory context, and experiencing an odour without these additional cues is likely to be different from experiencing the odour in a natural multisensory environment. Here we explore if odour-evocative words, rich in semantic connotations, differ in their colour associations compared to those associated with just odour. Twenty individuals were tested in each of four geographical locations; Germany, Malaysia, The Netherlands and the United States of America. Participants chose the three colours they most closely associated with both odours and odour-words from a chart of 36, using Xperiment software (www.xperiment.mobi). Preliminary results indicate that there were differences between odour-evocative words and odour cues in terms of the associated colours, for all populations.
Seeing and feeling for self and other: Proprioceptive spatial location determines multisensory enhancement of touch
Authors: Cardini Flavia , Haggard Patrick , Ladavas Elisabetta
Published: November 2012

In the Visual Enhancement of Touch (VET), simply viewing one’s hand improves tactile spatial perception, even though vision is non-informative. While previous studies had suggested that looking at another person’s hand could also enhance tactile perception, no previous study had systematically investigated the differences between viewing one’s body and someone else’s. The aim of this study was to shed light on the relation between visuo–tactile interactions and the self-other distinction. In Experiment 1 we manipulated the spatial location where a hand was seen. Viewing one’s hand enhanced tactile acuity relative to viewing a neutral object, but only when the image of the hand was spatially aligned with the actual location of the participant’s unseen hand. The VET effect did not occur when one’s hand was viewed at a location other than that experienced proprioceptively. In contrast, viewing another’s hand produced enhanced tactile perception irrespective of spatial location. In Experiment 2, we used a multisensory stimulation technique, known as Visual Remapping of Touch, to reduce perceived spatial misalignment of vision and touch. When participants saw an image of their own hand being touched at the same time as the tactile stimulation, the reduction in perceived misalignment caused VET effect to return, even though the spatial location of the images was not consistent with the actual body posture. Our results suggest that multisensory modulation of touch depends on a representation of one’s body that is fundamentally spatial in nature. In contrast, representation of others is free from this spatial constraint.
The goal is not special: Electrophysiological evidence for the simultaneous selection of goal and effector location during motor preparation
Authors: Mason Luke , van Velzen Jose
Published: November 2012

The Premotor Theory of Attention (Rizzolatti et al., 1987, 1994) predicts that the intention to carry out an action will cause enhanced perceptual processing at the location of the action goal. This enhancement is often interpreted as a shift of spatial attention and is presumed to serve the purpose of selecting one goal amongst many distracters towards which to plan an action (selection-for-action, Allport, 1987 and Neumann, 1987). Early research on the premotor effect focused on the planning of saccades, whilst more recent work has extended the principle of enhanced processing at the goal to uni-manual movements such as reaching, pointing and grasping. Unlike saccades, however, successful planning of such uni-manual movements implies selection of an effector as well as a goal. We investigated this effect by recording participants’ EEG whilst cueing them to point to one of six targets arranged in an annular array. Visual processing was measured by reference to the size of the posterior N1 event related potential, elicited in response to task-irrelevant visual ‘probe’ stimuli presented at one of the six locations in the interval between the presentation of an auditory cue and the execution of the movement. Results showed enhanced perceptual processing simultaneously at the location of the effector and at the location of the action goal. We conclude that action planning leads to a pattern of facilitation and inhibition in perception, which achieves the selection of all action relevant locations, not just that of the goal.
Audio–visual recalibration is spatially specific, in external coordinates
Authors: Burr David , Arrighi Roberto , Cicchini Marco , Aagten-Murphy David
Published: November 2012

When visual and auditory stimuli are displayed with a spatial offset, the sound is heard at or near the visual stimulus (ventriloquist effect). After an adaptation period of repeated exposure to spatially offset audio–visual stimuli, sounds presented alone are perceived spatially displaced, in the direction of the adapting offset (ventriloquist aftereffect: Recanzione, 1998), pointing to recalibration of audio–visual alignment. Here we show that the recalibration is spatially selective. Adapting, one visual hemifield to (say) a leftward offset, and the other to a rightward (or zero) offset produces two separate spatially localized aftereffects, in opposite directions. If a large (30°) eye-movement is interposed between adaptation and test, the spatial specificity remains in head-centered coordinates. The results provide further evidence for the existence of spatiotopic (or at least craniotopic) spatial maps, which are subject to continual recalibration.
Plasticity in the acquisition of multisensory integration capabilities in superior colliculus
Authors: Stein Barry E. , Yu Liping , Xu Jinghong , Rowland Benjamin A.
Published: November 2012

The multisensory integration capabilities of superior colliculus (SC) neurons are normally acquired during early postnatal life and adapted to the environment in which they will be used. Recent evidence shows that they can even be acquired in adulthood, and require neither consciousness nor any of the reinforcement contingencies generally associated with learning. This process is believed to be based on Hebbian mechanisms, whereby the temporal coupling of multiple sensory inputs initiates development of a means of integrating their information. This predicts that co-activation of those input channels is sufficient to induce multisensory integration capabilities regardless of the specific spatiotemporal properties of the initiating stimuli. However, one might expect that the stimuli to be integrated should be consonant with the functional role of the neurons involved. For the SC, this would involve stimuli that can be localized. Experience with a non-localizable cue in one modality (e.g., ambient sound) and a discrete stimulus in another (e.g., a light flash) should not be sufficient for this purpose. Indeed, experiments with cats reared in omnidirectional sound (effectively masking discrete auditory events) reveal that the simple co-activation of two sensory input channels is not sufficient for this purpose. The data suggest that experience with the kinds of cross-modal events that facilitate the role of the SC in detecting, locating, and orienting to localized external events is a guiding factor in this maturational process. Supported by NIH grants NS 036916 and EY016716.
The effects of audiovisual task-set in visual search
Authors: Matusz Pawel J. , Eimer Martin
Published: November 2012

We investigated whether top-down attentional control settings can specify task-relevant features in different sensory modalities (vision and audition). Two audiovisual search tasks were used where a spatially uninformative visual singleton cue preceded a target search array. In different blocks, participants searched for a visual target (defined by colour or shape in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively), or target defined by a combination of visual and auditory features (e.g., red target accompanied by a high-pitch tone). Spatial cueing effects indicative of attentional capture by target-matching visual singleton cues in the unimodal visual search task were reduced or completely eliminated when targets were audiovisually defined. The N2pc component (i.e. index attentional target selection in vision) triggered by these cues was reduced and delayed during search for audiovisual as compared to unimodal visual targets. These results provide novel evidence that the top-down control settings which guide attentional selectivity can include perceptual features from different sensory modalities.
Temporal disparity effects on audiovisual integration in low vision individuals
Authors: Targher Stefano , Occelli Valeria , Zampini Massimiliano
Published: November 2012

Our recent findings have shown that sounds improve visual detection in low vision individuals when the audiovisual pairs are presented simultaneously. The present study purports to investigate possible temporal aspects of the audiovisual enhancement effect that we have previously reported. Low vision participants were asked to detect the presence of a visual stimulus (yes/no task) either presented in isolation or together with an auditory stimulus at different SOAs. In the first experiment, when the sound was always leading the visual stimuli, there was a significant visual detection enhancement even when the visual stimulus was temporally delayed by 400 ms. However, the visual detection improvement was reduced in the second experiment when the sound could randomly lead or lag the visual stimulus. A significant enhancement was found only when the audiovisual stimuli were synchronized. Taken together, the results of the present study seem to suggest that high-level associations between modalities might modulate audiovisual interactions in low vision individuals.
Use of auditory and visual cues during observation of conversations in young children and adults
Authors: Melzer Anne , Daum Moritz M.
Published: November 2012

In observed conversations, auditory and visual cues are used to shift attention towards the current speaker. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether one sensory modality dominates this cueing in prelinguistic and linguistic children and adults. To this end, participants from three age groups (1-year-olds, 3-year-olds and adults) were presented with three videos of conversations between two puppets: one condition with speech starting before the mouths moved (auditory first), one with the mouths moving before speech was audible (visual first) and one synchronous condition. Sound and vision were asynchronous only at the onset of each turn, at the end of turns, speech and mouth movements were always synchronous. We measured eye movements and calculated the latency of gaze shifts after the onset of speech and/or movement of the mouth at the beginning of turns. All age groups showed shorter latencies when auditory and visual cues occurred synchronously. The 1-year-olds and adults showed no difference between auditory-first and visual-first conditions, whereas the 3-year-olds showed significantly shorter latencies in the visual-first than auditory-first condition. These results suggest that already prelinguistic children use integrated auditory and visual cues in observed conversations to shift their attention between speakers. Furthermore, they indicate developmental differences: 3-year-olds rely more on visual than auditory cues. It has been shown in previous studies that 3-year-olds focus on different aspects of conversations than younger children and adults (e.g., intonation). It is possible that they also use visual cues more to facilitate the following of conversations.
Crossmodal attention alters auditory contrast sensitivity
Authors: Ciaramitaro Vivian , Jentzen Dan
Published: November 2012

We examined the influence of covert, endogenous, crossmodal attention on auditory contrast sensitivity in a two-interval forced-choice dual-task paradigm. Attending to a visual stimulus has been found to alter the visual contrast response function via a mechanism of contrast gain for sustained visual attention, or a combination of response gain and contrast gain for transient visual attention (Ling and Carrasco, 2006). We examined if and how auditory contrast sensitivity varied as a function of attentional load, the difficulty of a competing visual task, and how such effects compared to those found for the influences of attention on visual processing. In our paradigm, subjects listened to two sequential white noise stimuli, one of which was amplitude modulated. Subjects reported which interval contained the amplitude modulated auditory stimulus. At the same time a sequence of 5 letters was presented, in an rsvp stream at central fixation, for each interval. Subjects judged which interval contained the visual target. For a given block of trials, subjects judged which interval contained white letters (easy visual task) or, in a separate block of trials, which interval had more target letters ‘A’ (difficult visual task). We found that auditory thresholds were lower for the easy compared to the difficult visual task and that the shift in the auditory contrast response function was reminiscent of a contrast gain mechanism for visual contrast. Importantly, we found that the effects of crossmodal attention on the auditory contrast response function diminished with practice.
Effects of within-modal congruency, cross-modal congruency and temporal asynchrony on the perception of perceived audio–visual distance
Authors: Wilbiks Jonathan M. P. , Dyson Benjamin
Published: November 2012

The factors we use to determine whether information from separate modalities should be assigned to the same source include task demands, the spatial and temporal coincidence of the composite signals, and, whether the signals are congruent with one another. In a series of experiments, we examined how temporal asynchrony and congruency interact in a competitive binding situation. Across a series of experiments, participants assigned a temporally roving auditory stimulus to competing primary or secondary visual anchors (VAV), or, a temporally roving visual stimulus to competing primary or secondary auditory anchors (AVA), based on causality. Congruency was defined in terms of simulated distance both within- and between-modalities (visual: small, auditory: quiet = far; visual: large, auditory: loud = near). Strong temporal effects were revealed, with differences between VAV and AVA conditions reflecting natural auditory lag tolerance for binding. During VAV conditions, binding was influenced only by visual congruency. During AVA conditions, binding was influenced by audio–visual congruency. These differences did not seem to be due to the relative discriminability between visual and auditory magnitude. The data reiterate the dominance of audition in the time domain (showing stronger temporal effects), the dominance of vision in the spatial domain (showing stronger congruency effects), and, the assistance of domain-inappropriate modalities by domain-appropriate modalities. A special case of congruency in terms of visual looming will also be discussed, along with the potential alerting properties of high magnitude stimuli.
Early auditory sensory processing is facilitated by visual mechanisms
Authors: Schall Sonja , Kiebel Stefan J. , Maess Burkhard , von Kriegstein Katharina
Published: November 2012

There is compelling evidence that low-level sensory areas are sensitive to more than one modality. For example, auditory cortices respond to visual-only stimuli (Calvert et al., 1997; Meyer et al., 2010; Pekkola et al., 2005) and conversely, visual sensory areas respond to sound sources even in auditory-only conditions (Poirier et al., 2005; von Kriegstein et al., 2008; von Kriegstein and Giraud, 2006). Currently, it is unknown what makes the brain activate modality-specific, sensory areas solely in response to input of a different modality. One reason may be that such activations are instrumental for early sensory processing of the input modality — a hypothesis that is contrary to current text book knowledge. Here we test this hypothesis by harnessing a temporally highly resolved method, i.e., magnetoencephalography (MEG), to identify the temporal response profile of visual regions in response to auditory-only voice recognition. Participants () briefly learned a set of voices audio–visually, i.e., together with a talking face in an ecologically valid situation, as in daily life. Once subjects were able to recognize these now familiar voices, we measured their brain responses using MEG. The results revealed two key mechanisms that characterize the sensory processing of familiar speakers’ voices: (i) activation in the visual face-sensitive fusiform gyrus at very early auditory processing stages, i.e., only 100 ms after auditory onset and (ii) a temporal facilitation of auditory processing (M200) that was directly associated with improved recognition performance. These findings suggest that visual areas are instrumental already during very early auditory-only processing stages and indicate that the brain uses visual mechanisms to optimize sensory processing and recognition of auditory stimuli.