Senses can work alone {unimodal perception}. At most neuraxis levels, sense inputs converge {intermodal perception}. Object relationships depend on intermodal connections, not just vision. Taste and smell, and touch and kinesthesia, have strong connections.
animals
All animals use intermodal and unimodal perception. Humans and apes recognize objects through fast intermodal processes and slower unimodal processes.
effects
Intermodal is better than unimodal for response reliability, impulse number, peak impulse frequency, and discharge-train duration. Intermodal sense associations can anticipate sequential stimuli from different sense modes.
learning
Learning in one sense does not transfer to another sense.
development
At human, ape, and monkey birth, object perception does not separate input into separate senses, uses one process involving all senses, and does not analyze features. Later, humans separate stimuli into different senses by cerebral-cortex inhibitory mechanisms, analyze sense features using symbols, and then combine features intermodally. For example, vision-cortex lip-movement analysis and auditory-cortex tone-and-sound-location analysis coordinate.
intelligence
Mentally retarded and dyslexic children have more difficulty with multisensory stimuli than with unimodal stimuli.
Consciousness>Consciousness>Sense
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Date Modified: 2022.0224