Tutorial 2: Ward and Wright

Monday, July 2 2012 9:15 - 12:30 @ Old Ship Hotel

Tutorial 2: "Sensory substitution"

Jamie Ward (School of Psychology, Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, UK)
Thomas Wright (School of Psychology, Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, UK)

SUMMARY:

Sensory substitution devices convert information relating to one sensory signal into another signal: typically visual information is converted into touch or sound. This has practical consequences (e.g. for the blind) as well as raising deep scientific and philosophical questions (e.g. relating to neural plasticity, and the relationship between visual information and visual conscious experience).

In the first part of the tutorial, different devices will be considered starting from the seminal work of Bach-y-Rita to the present day (e.g. attempts to create a magnetic sense). There will be an opportunity to interact with some of these devices.

In the second part of the tutorial, evidence from psychology and neuroscience will be presented concerning performance-based and brain-based measures of the functioning of these devices. The third part of the tutorial focuses on the phenomenological reports of users of these devices and theoretical attempts to account for them (e.g. sensory-motor theories of visual experience).