Subject: Re: Difference between cognition and perception? From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Claire_Pich=E9?= <clairepiche(at)VIF.COM> Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 08:38:33 -0400Martin Braun wrote : >....If a speaker's voice is played back via headphones and slightly pitch-shifted, a compensatory pitch shift by the voice occurs that the speaker remains unaware of. Here we must say that perception, but not cognition, of the played-back pitch shift has occurred... > > > Here is a situation that you may have experienced. You are at the beach with someone who's talking to you. What he is saying to you is so interesting that you are completely absrobed by the subject. Gently, the sound of the ocean disappeared. Then he stops talking to you, you are not absorbed anymore, the sound of the ocean comes back. In this situation, would you say that for a few minutes your ears were only stimulated by the voice but not by the sound of the ocean? Like a microphone, the ear reacts to the incoming acoustic stimuli without discrimination. When in its way to the brain via the auditory nerve, the incoming signal becomes perceptible by the organ named "brain". I considere the perception as being the anteroom of the cognition, and the cognition as being the result of how we subjectively manage all the informations that reaches the brain. By the way There is an excellent book written by the neurobiologist Antonio R. Damasio entitled Descartes' Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (the book is also avaliable in french) where the chapter 10 discusses the *Body-Minded Brain*. You can find a Review of Damasio, /Descartes' Error /written by Daniel C. Dennett at http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/damasio.htm Claire Piché