El sistema perceptivo: esa pequeña máquina del tiempo

• Autores: Ignacio Velasco, Charles Spence, Jordi Navarra Ordoño
• Localización: Anales de psicología, ISSN-e 1695-2294, ISSN 0212-9728, Vol. 27, Nº. 1, 2011, págs. 195-201
• Idioma: español
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

    Diversas circunstancias de carácter físico (por ejemplo, el hecho de que la luz y el sonido no viajen a la misma velocidad) y/o fisioló-gico (la señal auditiva tarda menos que la señal visual en llegar a la corteza cerebral primaria) pueden originar ciertos desajustes temporales entre la información sensorial sobre un mismo evento. Teniendo en cuenta la enorme cantidad de estímulos que nos invade en ciertos momentos, el poder re-agrupar las señales sensoriales que pertenecen a un mismo even-to, a pesar de la asincronía, puede resultar un mecanismo adaptativo de primer orden. El cerebro humano parece capaz, en definitiva, de hacer reaparecer la simultaneidad allí donde no la hay. ¿Cómo lo logra? Dos fenómenos recientemente descubiertos ¿la ventriloquia temporal (según la cual, la aparición de un estímulo puede influir en el momento en el que percibimos otros) y la recalibración temporal (a través de la cual, el cerebro re-alinea las señales asincrónicas que provienen de distintas modalidades sensoriales)¿ atestiguan que la forma en que lo hace es mucho más activa y flexible de lo que hasta ahora se había imaginado.

  • English

    Various physical circumstances (for instance, the fact that light and sound do not travel at the same speed) and/or physiological factors (such as the fact that auditory signals are initially processed more rapidly than visual signals) give rise to small asynchronies between sensory signals pertaining to a specific multisensory event. Considering the large amount of sensory stimulation that bombards our senses at any given time, being able to re-group sensory signals that belong to the same event (even if they arrive asynchronously) can be highly adaptative. Indeed, the human brain is by-and-large able to maintain a simultaneous and coherent percep-tion of the proximal events that occur in the environment. How is this achieved? Two recently discovered phenomena �temporal ventriloquism (where the presence of a stimulus in one modality influences the perceived time of occurrence of a stimulus in another modality) and temporal recali-bration (where the brain realigns asynchronous signals from different sensory modalities)� confirm that the way in which the human brain maintains synchrony is more active and flexible than previously thought.

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