2007 年 35 巻 4 号 p. 110-115
Purpose of this study;
We may find the relation between sensing organs and our brain through the evolution and development in human. Our five senses are considerable to integrate their sensual information in the associated area in human brain. Richard C. Cytowic have shown an actual existence for “Synesthesia” and their characteristic type. From this investigation, we get the important hint of the study of integration mechanism between the various complex senses in human brain.
Experiments using MEG and fMRI;
In this study we have tried to measure the human senses using magnetoencephalography(MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI). The first experiment is the study of the complex sensing mechanism between vision and audition. We used visual-spatial/audio-spatial task in this MEG experiment, and analyzed the effects on the selective attention for audio/visual task. From the results we found the effects of modification on neural activities in the higher visual area by the selective attention. On the other hand, the second complex sensing study between olfaction and taste was done using MEG and fMRI. From odd-ball paradigm we get source localization for the cognitive response evoked by the odorant pulse stimulation. And also from taste experiment the second neural center was found in the orbito-frontal area with the late latency about 1150ms.. The common active brain areas were found both taste stimuli and olfactory stimuli by using fMRI experiment.
Future development of this study;
Recently, E.T. Rolls showed an integration model, such as “Gate theory for five sensing mechanism”. We will study the development of new measurements and more effective techniques of the analysis for integration of sensing mechanism in human brain.
