Search

En prêtant une attention au vivant extérieur (le cosmos et la nature) et intérieur (notre corps et nos sensations internes), les sciences du vivant que sont l'esthésiologie et l'émersiologie viennent renouveler leur méthode. L'écologie corporelle, étudiée dans les précédents ouvrages de l'auteur, permet effectivement de s'ouvrir au monde et de s'y sentir présent. Car la question centrale est la suivante : comment passer au travers du vivant et pas seulement à travers?

In this book, leading scientists in the fields of sensory biology, neuroscience, physics and engineering explore the basic operational principles and behavioral uses of flow sensing in animals and how they might be applied to engineering applications such as autonomous control of underwater or aerial vehicles.Although humans possess no flow-sensing abilities, countless aquatic (e.g. fish, cephalopods and seals), terrestrial (e.g. crickets and spiders) and aerial (e.g. bats) animals have flow sensing abilities that underlie remarkable behavioral feats. These include the ability to follow silent hydrodynamic trails long after the trailblazer has left the scene, to form hydrodynamic images of their environment in total darkness, and to swim or fly efficiently and effortlessly in the face of destabilizing currents and winds.

Never so pleased, sir.'Twas an excellent dance, And for a preface, I never heard a better. Two Noble Kinsmen, Act III, Sc.S This volume is based mostly on the lectures delivered at an Advanced Study Institute (ASI) of the same title held in July 1977. One lecture given is not in the volume and three chapters, although not based on lectures delivered, have been added to better balance the book. A chapter on the ecosensory functions in crustaceans could not be put in due to time contingency. This absence is deeply regretted. The idea to hold an ASI on Sensory Ecology evolved slowly, main­ ly due to my own research interest in the past and partly to the discussions I had with a number of colleagues, particularly Dr. John Lythgoe of the University of Sussex. The purpose was to interface Sensory Physiology with Ecology so that workers in those fields will develop a greater awareness for each other. Sense organs have of course evolved to keep their possessors.~ware of the environment and changes in it. Thus, normally one could expect that a study of their functions will be undertaken in relation to environmental parameters.

This book evolved through the efforts of several organizations and the dedication of many individuals. In 1987, we received arequest to propose a workshop topic for the Fifth International Theriological Congress (ITC) to be held in August 1989 in Rome, Italy. After looking up the meaning of the word'theriological'in the dictionary and discovering that it pertains to mammalian behavior, we decided a symposium on sensory abilities of whales and dOlphins would be an interesting topic. The ITC convenes only every five years and has the distinction of being very weIl attended by scientists from around the world. We thought that hosting a workshop in conjunction with the ITC would attract a variety of international scientists that rarely have the opportunity to interact. Fortunately for all involved, our prediction was correct. The first two days of the workshop, 23-24 August 1989, were held in conjunction with ITC and the nearly 1,000 attending scientists were able to view our posters and listen to lectures. The third day was limited to only ab out 65 invited scientists who were divided into topical working groups chaired by a rapporteur.

This book collects all the lectures presented during the NATO Advanced Study Institute on'Photoreception and Sensory Transduction in Aneura1 Organisms,'held in Villa Le Pianore (Versi1ia, Italy), September 3-14, 1979. In order to publish the lectures in the shortest possible time, we had to make the decision not to include the free communications, the informal seminars, and the panel discussions, notwithstanding their very high scientific level and interest. Only the final panel discussion has been summarized by Prof. W. Haupt (whose effort we gratefully acknowledge), because it gives a comprehensive view of the state of the art in this field. The ASI was intended to be a high-level course, characterized by an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of photoreception and photosensory physiology in aneural organisms, bringing together scientists from different fields and specializations. We hope that these characteristics are reflected in the content of the book, which is meant to be both an advanced textbook for researchers and students entering the field and a critical overview of the problems of photosensory transduction in aneura1 organisms. The topics pre­ sented range from a phenomenological description of the different photomotile responses in various microorganisms to a discussion of the molecular processes involved in the primary events of photo­ reception as well as in the subsequent steps of the transduction chain.

Since the nineteenth century, museums have kept their artifacts in glass cases to better preserve them, and drawings and photographs have become standard ways of presenting the past. These practices have led to an archaeology dominated by visual description, even though human interaction with the surrounding world involves the whole body and all of its senses. In the past few years, sensory archaeology has become more prominent, and Making Senses of the Past is one of the first collected volumes on this subject. This book presents cutting-edge research on new theoretical issues. The essays presented here take readers on a multisensory journey around the world and across time. In ancient Peru, a site provides sensory surprises as voices resound beneath the ground and hidden carvings slowly reveal their secrets. In Canada and New Zealand, the flicker of reflected light from a lake dances on the faces of painted rocks and may have influenced when and why the pigment was applied. In Mesopotamia, vessels for foodstuffs build a picture of a past cuisine that encompasses taste and social activity in the building of communities. While perfume and flowers are examined in various cultures, in the chamber tombs of ancient Roman Palestine, we are reminded that not all smells are pleasant. Making Senses of the Past explores alternative ways to perceive past societies and offers a new way of wiring archaeology that incorporates the senses.

Il Centro Studi sul Cibo e l'Alimentazione, con il sostegno del Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali dell'Università degli Studi di Napoli “l'Orientale”, ha tenuto un Seminario interdisciplinare di Studi su Sensibilità, Sensorialità e Linguaggio. A partire dai ‘sensi minori'(28 e 29 maggio 2012). Questo volume rappresenta, nella sostanza, il rendiconto di quelle due Giornate. Più in particolare, si è trattato (e si tratta) di un percorso che ha svolto un ragionamento ad ampio raggio sulla sensorialità, tenuta distinta per quanto possibile dalla più studiata sensibilità, senza peraltro trascurare le vie, a volte tortuose e problematiche, della resa linguistica o discorsiva di quanto esperito per la via dei sensi. Pur avendo focalizzato sui ‘sensi minori'(tatto, olfatto e gusto) non sono mancati in questa occasione approfondimenti anche sui sensi più visitati dalla nostra tradizione culturale (udito e vista), anche perché l'intento di questa iniziativa non è stato quello di rovesciare semplicisticamente questo assetto culturale (proponendo di rendere ‘maggiori'quelli ‘minori, e/o viceversa), ma semmai di provare a decostruire questa distinzione o gerarchia. Anche talune pratiche alimentari, oltre che quella della degustazione del vino, si sono così trovate al centro del Seminario, non foss'altro che per il loro attestarsi, da sempre e comunque, come la via unica e insostituibile, tanto esperienziale quanto conoscitiva, per esplorare tattilità, olfattività e soprattutto i sapori. Il quadro che ne è emerso è stato quello della risonanza possibile di una intelligenza sensoriale, alla cui messa in scena provvedono le varie ‘porte dei sensi', anche (e forse soprattutto) quando non ce ne mostriamo consapevoli. Questa mancanza di consapevolezza si è però evidenziata anche nel fatto che pur essendo tutti e indistintamente, in quanto animali umani, consumatori di cibo e dediti quindi a pratiche alimentari variamente articolate, sembriamo tuttavia mostrare scarsa attenzione e avvedutezza riguardo a questo nostro ruolo di consumatori, il che ha così richiamato l'esigenza di una maggiore estensione e un più intenso approfondimento di tale consapevolezza, attrezzandosi a renderla più fine e avveduta.

The traveller to India is urged to visit that country's western shore with the Arabian Sea where, about 300 miles to the south of Bombay, an exceedingly lovely coast reaches the peak of its harmony at the erstwhile Portuguese enclave of Goa. The ambience of this alluring province is an exquisite balance of palm trees and rice fields, aged colonial homes -many still elegant and brightly painted -slowly being swallowed up by the exuberant tropical vegetation, incredible blossoms, colorful and courteous people and, deeper inland, some splendid examples of 17th and 18th century Portuguese ecclesiastical architecture. A feast for the eyes by day, and in the evening enough fresh fish and other good food to satisfy the most demanding gourmet. This was the paradisiacal setting for the first International Conference on the Neural Organization of Sensory Systems (ICONOSS for short), sponsored jointly by the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research at Bombay, the Department of Atomic Energy of the Government of India, and the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India. About 100 participants were pleasantly confined at Fort Aguada, a resort cunningly built amongst the ruins of an old Portuguese fort. The conference program achieved an international flavor, recruiting scientists from many nations: India (naturally), Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, Finland, France, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States of America. The subjects discussed were as diverse as the countries represented.

Present knowledge of the mechanisms underlying any single sensory modality is so massive as to discourage effort directed towards completeness. The idea underlying the structure of this volume on'Sensory transduction'was to select just a few topics of general interest, which are currently being investigated and for which a reasonably clear picture is now available. During the last five years there has been a revolution in the way sensory physi­ ologists think about transduction, and a series of exciting advances have been made in understanding the basic processes of photo transduction, chemotransduction and mechan­ otransduction. It is clear that in many cases the fundamental processes by which nature attains optimization of performance are similar, and that they have much in common with more general processes of signal recognition by living structures. The molecular events underlying the detection of photons by visual cells, the recognition of a given molecule by a chemoreceptor, or the level of a hormone in the extracellular fluid by a target cell, are all very similar, and involve the activation of a sequence of events leading to a secon d messenger. The 20 papers that form the present volume cover various topics in the field of sensory transduction. They originate from the lectures, seminars and discussions which made up the XVIII Course of the International School of Biophysics held in Erice, 9th - 19th June 1988.

This volume constitutes a series of invited chapters based on presentations given at an International Conference on the Sensory Biology of Aquatic Animals held June 24-28, 1985 at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida. The immediate purpose of the conference was to spark an exchange of ideas, concepts, and techniques among investigators concerned with the different sensory modalities employed by a wide variety of animal species in extracting information from the aquatic environment. By necessity, most investigators of sensory biology are specialists in one sensory system: different stimulus modalities require different methods of stimulus control and, generally, different animal models. Yet, it is clear that all sensory systems have principles in common, such as stimulus filtering by peripheral structures, tuning of receptor cells, signal-to-noise ratios, adaption and disadaptation, and effective dynamic range. Other features, such as hormonal and efferent neural control, circadian reorganization, and receptor recycling are known in some and not in other senses. The conference afforded an increased awareness of new discoveries in other sensory systems that has effectively inspired a fresh look by the various participants at their own area of specialization to see whether or not similar principles apply. This inspiration was found not only in theoretical issues, but equally in techniques and methods of approach. The myopy of sensory specialization was broken in one unexpected way by showing limitations of individual sense organs and their integration within each organism. For instance, studying vision, one generally chooses a visual animal as a model.

This book is based on the lectures given at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on'Sensory Perception and Transduction in Aneural Organisms'held in Volterra (Pisa. Italy) from the third to the fourteenth of September. 1984. The Advanced Study Institute was planned as a high level course dealing with several aspects and problems of sensory perception and transduction of diverse environmental stimuli in aneural organisms. Scientists from different fields and cultural backgrounds were present at the meeting. both as lecturers and as students. The lectures and the discussions that followed represented a well integrated interdisci­ plinary approach to the questions considered. At the end of the Advanced Study Institute course. it was quite clear that. notwith­ standing the apparent heterogeneity of the topics dealt with. unifying concepts and ideas already existed, among the most important being the role of membranes and their physicochemical properties. All this should be reflected in the content of this book. We gratefully acknowledge the financial sponsorship of the Scientific Affairs Division of NATO (Brussels), that made both the Advanced Study Institute on'Sensory Perception and Transduction in Aneural Organisms'and this book possible. Finally. we are also indebted to Ms. Pat Parham Morgan who expertly retyped all the chapters of the book and Ms. Leslie Schmidt of Plenum Publishing Co. provided us valuable advice and suggestions on the preparation of this book. G. Colombetti F. Lenci P. S.

In a recent book Arthur Koestler describes very cynically the superfluity of scientific meetings. He lists the various gatherings that are going to take place in one brief summer season in the Kon­ gresshaus of a small Swiss village, ending the long list with three interdisciplinary symposia, titles of which contain the three words'Environment','Pollution', and'Future'in three different permu­ tations. By the same token, Koestler could list endlessly meetings on sensory physiology and behaviour or their synonyms, which have taken place allover the world on the national or international level in recent years. The organizing committee of the Oholo conferences was very well aware of this situation when the topic for the 19th Conference was selected. However this field is relatively new in Israel - only in the last decade were several teams established in this country to carry out combined studies on sensory physiology and behaviour. They attracted ever-increasing numbers of students of zoology, phy­ siology, medicine and psychology. The committee thought that the time was ripe to bring the Israeli students and scientists together with noted investigators from allover the world, to discuss and analyse the state of the art. The Conference dealt with processing of information obtained through the various senses: visual, auditory, tactile, as well as the olfactory and gastatory senses. More complex behavioural patterns were also analysed.

This volume represents the Proceedings of the Second Inter­ national Symposium on Skin Senses held on the campus of Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida. The symposium was held on June 5 through 7, 1978, in honor of Professor Yngve Zotterrnan to commemorate his 80th birthday and his more than 50 years of energetic involvement in physiological and psychophysical prob­ lems of cutaneous, gustatory, and olfactory sensitivities. The First International Symposium on Skin Senses was in­ tended to stimulate dialogues between electrophysiologists and psychophysicists in order to examine the mechanisms of cutaneous sensitivity by way of a mUlti-disciplinary approach. The 12 years since that meeting has seen much progress in the morphology, electrophysiology, and taxonomy of cutaneous receptors. There has been a growing awareness among psychophysicists that, not only are psychometric threshold functions of importance, but descriptions of the growth of sensations to suprathreshold stimuli are of at least equal importance. One of the most exciting recent events has been the development of a technique that permits recording activity in single primary afferent nerve fibers by poking a microelectrode through the skin into a nerve bundle--microneurography. This development allows one to conduct psychophysical measurements of sensation and, at the same time, to sample the primary neural activity associated with the same stimuli. The aim of this symposium was to bring to­ gether psychophysicists and microneurographers in order to explore the power and the limitations of such an approach when applied to the cutaneous senses.

This book is a collection of original research papers given at a symposium entitled'Sensory Systems and Behavior of Aquatic Mammals', hosted by the USSR Academy of Sciences. The meeting was held in Moscow from 16 to 25 October, 1991 and involved nearly 100 scientists from around the world. The major headings of the book correspond to the session topics at the symposium. This meeting was not the first dedicated to problems of sensory systems in aquatic mammals. Experts in this field met several times previously to discuss important problems of sensory functions in echolocating animals. symposia on biosonar systems were held in Frascati, Italy in 1966, then in Jersey, France in 1978, and in Helsingor, Denmark in 1986. Papers presented at these meetings were pUblished in books that advanced significantly the understanding of sensory systems (Busnel and Fish, 1980; Nachtigall and Moore, 1988). Initially, echolocating bats were the main subjects of consideration. However, studies on echolocating aquatic mammals, whales and dolphins, increased from one meeting to the next. Indeed, aquatic mammals are of exceptional interest for studying the adaptation of sensory functions for echolocation in specific aquatic environments. As a natural consequence of these developments, the 1989 symposium in Rome was devoted specifically to the sensory systems of cetaceans (Thomas and Kastelein, 1990). This symposium was held within the Fifth International Theriological Congress and was attended by many scientists.

The Novartis Foundation Series is a popular collection of the proceedings from Novartis Foundation Symposia, in which groups of leading scientists from a range of topics across biology, chemistry and medicine assembled to present papers and discuss results. The Novartis Foundation, originally known as the Ciba Foundation, is well known to scientists and clinicians around the world.

Unsere Sinnesorgane dienen der Wahrnehmung unserer Umwelt. Der Mensch ist als einziges Lebewesen fähig, Defizite in einem Bereich der Wahrnehmung durch seine Koordinationsfähigkeit auszugleichen. Dieses Buch entstand aus den Referaten etablierter Wissenschafter anlässlich eines Symposiums im September 2007 in Münster. Durch die interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit von Experten, die sich mit der Sinneswahrnehmung beschäftigen, gelang es erstmalig, aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse und neueste Entwicklungen aus den einzelnen Fachrichtungen ausführlich und umfangreich darzustellen. Der Schwerpunkt wurde auf Diagnostik und spezielle Therapieverfahren sowie innovative Behandlungs- und Rehabilitationsmöglichkeiten gelegt. Fundierte historische Abhandlungen runden dieses Buch ab. Das Buch richtet sich neben HNO-Ärzten, auch an Augenärzte, Internisten, Neurologen, Orthopäden und Allgemeinmediziner.

Research on sensory processing or the way animals see, hear, smell, taste, feel and electrically and magnetically sense their environment has advanced a great deal over the last fifteen years. This book discusses the most important themes that have emerged from recent research and provides a summary of likely future directions. The book starts with two sections on the detection of sensory signals over long and short ranges by aquatic animals, covering the topics of navigation, communication, and finding food and other localized sources. The next section, the co-evolution of signal and sense, deals with how animals decide whether the source is prey, predator or mate by utilizing receptors that have evolved to take full advantage of the acoustical properties of the signal. Organisms living in the deep-sea environment have also received a lot of recent attention, so the next section deals with visual adaptations to limited light environments where sunlight is replaced by bioluminescence and the visual system has undergone changes to optimize light capture and sensitivity. The last section on central co-ordination of sensory systems covers how signals are processed and filtered for use by the animal. This book will be essential reading for all researchers and graduate students interested in sensory systems.

This book provides a most complete overview of physiological and psychophysical properties of perceptual systems in man and animals. The information processing chains are described step-by-step from the stimuli of the respective environments, via the perceptual neuronal coding networks to conscious sensations and behaviour.Articles by W G K Backhaus, A G Clark, B Hiley, A Iznak, M Kavaliers, B Kramer, A Michelsen, C Neumeyer, G A Orban, T Radil, D G Stavenga, M Stengl, U Thurm, R L DeValois, R Wehner, J S Werner, W Wiltschko, and related short articles.

Advances in Physiological Sciences, Volume 31: Sensory Physiology of Aquatic Lower Vertebrates covers the proceedings of the symposia of the 28th International Congress of Physiology. The book presents 17 papers that detail advance findings in the sensory physiology of aquatic lower vertebrates. The coverage of the text includes electroreceptors in Indian catfish teleosts; electroreceptive microampulla in the African mudfish Clarias lazera; and species specificity of electric organ discharges in a sympatric group of gymnotoid fish from Manaus. The book also presents comparative studies, such as the sex differences in the electric organ discharge of Eigenmannia virescens and the effect of gonadal maturation; and behavioral studies, such as social behavior in mormyrid fish. The book will be of great interest to marine biologists, ethologists, and zoologists.

Advances in Physiological Sciences, Volume 16: Sensory Functions contains the proceedings of the symposia of the 28th International Congress of Physiology, held in Budapest in July 1980. The book presents scientific papers discussing a wide range of topics on sensory functions. The topics discussed include somato-sensory thalamic unit activities recorded in chronic awake animals; neuropharmacology of spinal cord reaction to noxious inputs; pain and thermoreception; and neural mechanisms for binocular depth discrimination. Physiologists, pathologists, biologists, physicians, and researchers will find the book invaluable.

Sensory Mechanisms

Bringing together contributors working on a common problem but addressing different levels of brain organization by way of different techniques, The Mind-Brain Continuum seeks to determine which scientific questions are most pressing as we move toward discovering the neurobiology of psychological processes. As the title implies, contributions are organized around the notion that mental activity is brain activity, providing a broad, integrated view of a particular subset of brain function. The focus is on sensory perception, processes that include somatosensory, auditory, and olfactory processes, as well research on vision.ContributorsAlbert S. Bregman, Patricia S. Churchland, Martha Constantine-Paton, Antonio R. Damasio, Hannah Damasio, Howard Eichenbaum, Rodolfo R. Llinás, Nikos K. Logothetis, Christoph von der Malsburg, Stephen E. McAdams, Michael M. Merzenich, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, John A. Simmons, Wolf Singer

This volume is a record of the proceedings of a festspiel held to honor Jozef F. Zwislocki for his outstanding contributions to science and to Syracuse University. His contributions to the knowledge of the hydromechanical, neurophysiological, and perceptual mechanisms of the auditory system are truly monumental. In addition, his contributions to the comprehension of the mammalian auditory system include not only landmark ideas, but also many of the experimental findings in psychoacoustics and peripheral auditory physiology that constitute the database which has provided a springboard for research in laboratories throughout the world. His efforts to link physics, biology, and psychophysics to create a basis for our understanding of the nervous system have had an influence that extends far beyond the science of acoustics. Although the purpose of this conference was to recognize the many achievements of Professor Zwislocki, the spirit of the participants was to honor him in a manner that best characterized his lifetime dedication to research, that is, to report the results of their own work. Consequently, this volume is first and foremost a compilation of scientific papers in the area of sensory research. Some are reports of recent experiments and some present an overview of research efforts extending from the past up to ongoing work. His influence can be recognized in all of the contributions and some explicitly describe the ties between their own work and the germinal ideas planted by him. This volume, in reflecting the rapid progress being made in sensory science and written by those who are making it, is a fitting tribute to Zwislocki, who always stood at the forefront of his science.

This book is a sequel on the topics of photoreception and phototransduction covered by Volume I of the series (Biophysics of Photoreception: Molecular and Phototransductive Events), adding the analysis of two other modalities of sensory reception and transduction — the chemical and mechanical ones, which are phylogenetically older. This characterization results not in a succession of three different and uncorrelated moments, but in a fruitful confrontation between experts which usually act separately and in an integration between various particular knowledges. This approach highlights the basic strategies common to different sensory modalities and specializations, as well as the ecological adaptations of each of them.

Perception is the first step in the whole of the cognitive processes (attention, learning, memory, categorization, imagery, intuition, inference, comprehension, thought, judgement, expression) which culminate in the reasoning activity and to which emotions make a contribution. The production of perception representations is correlated with the perception events. Such perception representations occur by means of the contribution of two kinds of factors: sensory signals which reproduce the spatio-temporal characteristics of the receptor modifications, and interpretation of the intrinsic ambiguity of such signals by means of unconscious inferences. Various interactions intervene between bottom-up signals from peripheral receptors and top-down signals from higher centres.

Zooplankton is a major work of reference for researchers in plankton biology, physiology and behavior, which combines behavioral and psychological approaches to the study of plankton on present and interdisciplinary investigation of sensory processes in pelagic environments. The breadth of perspective thus achieved provides valuable insights into the larger scale ecological processes of biological productivity, community structure and population dynamics. Technological advances in almost all aspects of biological research have opened up opportunities for a re-examination of the sensory ecology of planktonic organisms. In this wide-ranging collection, leading researchers in planktonic behavior and physiology address the rapidly developing interface between these two major areas. The studies presented range from the laboratory to the field and from the cell to the whole organism, but share the common goal of understanding the special sensory world of organisms that live in pelagic environments and how their behavior and physiology relate to it.