Researchers J.E. Lugo, R. Doti and Jocelyn Flaubert from the University of Montreal, along with Walter Wittich from McGill University, wanted to know if a feeling from an electrical stimulation of a body part (such as the leg) which normally would not be perceived, would be felt if it was simultaneously accompanied by a visual or auditory signal. The researchers studied this by applying slight electrical stimulation to the right calf of volunteers—the stimulation was so slight that it was not detected by the participants. The researchers then paired that electrical stimulation simultaneously with a visual signal, a distinct noise or a progressively louder white noise signal. The volunteers reported when they felt anything in their leg and the electrical response of the calf muscle activation was measured.
The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that if an electrical stimulation of the leg is not initially detected, this sensation may be perceived by the addition of a visual or auditory signal with a corresponding electrical activation increase. The results described in this study indicate that the brain not only constantly processes information received from the senses, but also acts on that information to change what is happening in the peripheral system, and thus changing what we actually detect.
The results of the last experiment are characteristic of stochastic resonance. This is an interesting phenomenon where as noise is added to a system, the system's performance improves until, at a certain point, the performance begins to deteriorate. This is exactly what the researchers found in this study—as they increased the signal, participants reported more feeling in their leg, but this eventually decreased, even as the signal continued to get louder. They found this resonance signature even if the stimulus they used in this experiment was not noise but a pulse. These results show that a tactile stimulus combined with a specific level of auditory stimulation results in optimal detection of that sensation. However, too much signal energy will limit the response. It also shows that these dynamics represent a fundamental principle of multisensory integration.
This study gives us more insight into multisensory integration, which the authors argue, will result in increased knowledge of how the brain normally interacts with the peripheral system. In addition, learning more about multisensory integration will lead to a better understanding of disorders such as autism, in which altered sensory processing often occurs.
Association for Psychological Science
Blended Senses
Fascinating! That's also why people listening to faster music are more cognicent and can race better when driving.
reference?
Hi quantum - do you have a reference to the claim that listening to faster music improves cognition? That's a bold claim and I've not seen that one before. Interested in anything you can use to back that up.
Reference...fast music:
Only personal subjective experience (not that it discounts the claim), listening to heavy metal, I feel that I am able to more safely navigate at faster speeds. It's probably also related to a faster heartrate, probably adrenaline induced cognition mostly. I also (subjectively) feel that listening to videogame music (NES soundtracks-metroid, gauntlet, contra, link, zelda) on the way to class improves my concentration and IQ, it could in part be nostalgia or memory of the actual video game motions and controls.
http://www.vgmusic.com/music/console/nintendo/nes/
Related to that: My (subjective) hypothesis is that the older generation video games required more intelligence to play and that newer generation video games lack that because there is less imagination and skill required since it's mostly all just high resolution 3d graphic art. The data that supports that is the idea that the programmers of the older generation video games were more intelligent because they had to innovate everything from scratch and mathematical formulas as opposed to having that already mostly premade as with the newer generation video games.
needs more rigor
Using personal experience is tricky... you're right that it doesn't necessarily discount the claim, but introspection is fraught with bias, so in general it doesn't go very far in the way of supporting evidence. A quick search of the literature turned up a study (http://scholar.google.com is your friend) that links metabolism to mental effort, and more importantly, an association between blood glucose levels and response accuracy (http://tinyurl.com/5k7pc6). Since adrenaline mobilizes resources and increases metabolism, it's suggestive of your claim but obviously there are too many other factors possibly involved in cognition to say anything definitive.
As to your point about video games, your reasoning is suspect. Even if it were true that the game programmers needed to be more intelligent because computational resources were much more limited (something I tentatively agree with), that doesn't necessarily mean the games themselves require more intelligence to play... those are completely independent variables IMO. Actually the opposite can be argued, that the computational power today enables new game experiences that weren't available. Think also of the Wii controller and how that can teach people to use their bodies in ways that weren't available before that technology emerged.
However, I don't play video games anymore (kind of a breaking-an-addiction kind of thing :-] ), so I can't say how games today relate to games of yesteryear in terms of difficulty. I played a lot of really brainless games in the 80s as well as some very challenging ones, and I suspect the same range is present today as well.
More on Video Games
Comparing Zelda: An Ocerina of Time on N64 to the original Link on NES, or to Zelda: A Legend to the Past on SNES, I could precisely say that the games got easier as the graphics got better. As for Contra: Alien Wars on NES vs. Contra 3 on SNES, I think that the higher graphic game was easier in that case too.
Of course, Halo and Halo 2 on X-Box was brilliant because it allowed for playing against each other on the internet, it had brilliant graphics, and the game was fantasy 3-d but with realistic physics and bullet injury ratio involved, that and Goldeneye James Bond on N64.
Perhaps 1st person shoot-em-up games, flight simulations, sports games, and racing games got more much more realistic with much better graphics, realistic physics equations, and higher processing speeds. However, there is almost no difference in really driving a racecar on the road vs playing such racecar games on the console (except inertial forces experienced), perhaps that VR will be available sometime soon in a full blown hydraulic controlled driving-simulator type arena though with realistic acceleration and vibration simulation....perhaps realistic enough for student drivers learning. Albeit, the basic principles of driver-seat style racing or 1st person shooter game can actually go all the way back to Battle Tank or Star Raiders on the Atari.
Of course, tactical simulation games such as Civilization or Sim City were always good, and provided a much needed platform for, well, tactical games.
Anyhow, there is so much potential for video games or computational simulations to improve society, or at least the individual minds, if they could just be honed and utilized in education for job training purposes....why this hasn't happened on a large scale yet or why it is still shunned by employers is beyond me (just try putting "I play or used to play video games" on your job resume):
The Public Schools of the Future
The Video Game Job Interview
Retirement Home Arcades
3d Self Check Out
Anyway, I blame the Teacher's Union for being a beauracracy (curious people learn more in depth on Wikipedia than they do in 8 years of grade school eduction), Industry for not working more closely with grade school public education (children are the future) and for not taking a good thing seriously enough (video games are in high demand with children, so work with them to incorporate that somehow into the business model so they are prepared for business when they turn 16).
Supporting article
This article may help fuel your initial thesis.
video games are good
I strongly agree that video games are good, so long as they are not abused (which should go without saying). Video games are rather drug-like with the escapist element to them - this is why I quit playing them. And this is precisely why I agree with your point about improving society because if video games were institutionalized then they could be administered responsibly, with opportunities for reinforcing good habits (that's where I went wrong, I have zero discipline when it comes to video games).
Video games are their own reward but also offer what Randy Pausch called "head-fake" learning, meaning learning without realizing you're learning. Whether we're talking kids, the elderly, rehab clients, and so on, video games have so much potential to improve someone's cognitive health. Even straight-forward shoot-em-ups involve significant cognition. But even better are puzzle-style games that start easy and get harder as you progress.
Actually, I think the various Sim games are excellent training for our world. I often think that kids who grow up learning how to build and maintain a city (by playing SimCity) have a significant advantage over everyone else when it comes to thinking about complex systems, because they have an experiential foundation on which to ground concepts related to complexity, in a way that's difficult if not impossible to attain without simulation software.