Subject: Re: Speech intelligibility and spatial information From: Eckard Blumschein <Eckard.Blumschein(at)E-TECHNIK.UNI-MAGDEBURG.DE> Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 16:53:51 +0200Last week in Magdeburg, a neuroscientist explained that a single neuron may respond to either auditory or visual stimuli. Why not imagine a similar sharing of many neurons between sensory and motoric functionality? However, if I interpret the presented physiological results correctly, the switchover is rather sluggish. BTW, sluggishness is not always unwelcome. It was the only way of pain control when a surgeon removed an ulcer from the buttocks of the French king Luis XIV by a few strikes with his scalpel. Isn't the manual action of the blind supported by feeling instead of vision? I guess, if we try and obstruct their feeling by thick gloves, their tuning performance will decrease because they have to pay more attention to fine feeling. Eckard At 09:54 17.09.2001 -0500, Tom Brennan wrote: >You're correct in that piano tuning requires both otor and auditory actions but >the motor acts can only take place either after a sound has been heard so that >one knows in which direction to change a note (up or down) or if one knows the >result of a previous action on the tuning pins. This does allow for some >separation of motor and auditory actions but it true that one must listen while >physically tuning a note to determine the result of whatever physical actions >are taking place. It is also true that there are often motor actions related to >other listening tasks but few require a relationship to such fine motor skills >as required in tuning. For those reasons, I would expect to see a different >between blind and sighted tuners as the visual component involved would >potentially seem to come closer to overloading the system with input than is the >case for the blind. A difference just doesn't seem to be present although it >seems to me that blind tuners seem to have an easier time closing out other >environmental stimulation such as ambient noise when tuning. Of course, this is >a very general statement with no research to back it up that I'm aware of.