Hearing a dog having or seeing it activates the same area of ​​the brain – breaking latest news

Seeing, hearing, perceiving the outside world. The brain is the place where perceptions converge giving us the possibility to know the environment in which we live. And there’s a specific area of ​​the brain,
the superior temporal cortex, which acts as a control unit in which they converge these perceptions. An innate functionality and not dependent on the experiences that occur after birth. The discovery of this functionality was carried out by a mixed team from the IMT High Studies School of Lucca and the University of Turin, which published the results of an ingenious research coordinated by Emiliano Ricciardi in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
This is a discovery that sheds light on a still little-known aspect of the brain: how much of this multisensory processing is an innate ability and how much is instead dependent on the experiences one has since birth.

The perception of the outside world

To carry out their study, the researchers used the vision of a Walt Disney film, namely 101 Dalmatians, which they witnessed a group of blind people who listened to the audio description of the film, a group of congenitally deaf people subjected presentation of a video-only version with subtitles, and two groups of typically developing people who have either seen or heard the film. “By measuring the brain synchronization between individuals who only saw the video and those who only listened to the audio, we were able to identify the brain regions that combine information through the various sensory modalities” explains Francesca Setti of the IMT Alti School Studies and first author of the scientific article. «We have thus discovered that a specific area of ​​the cortex, the superior temporal cortex, it supports a representation of the outside world which is shared across the two modes e which is independent of any visual or acoustic experience made since birth, given that the same representation is present in the same way in people who do not see and in people who do not hear. Simply put, this is an area where the visual image of a dog is coupled with the audible signal of a dog barking, making it clear to our brain that the two stimuli from two different senses refer to the same object. of the world.” According to Pietro Pietrini, director of MoMiLab (Molecular Mind Laboratory) of the IMT School, and co-author of the study, the research shows how «most of the morphological and functional architecture of the human brain can develop and function independently of any sensory experience. This implies that we should promote fully inclusive educational strategies and social policies for people with sensory disabilities, given that their brains are no different from those of others.”