The western psychic as diviner: Experience and the politics of perception

Divination has been a well‐studied subject in the field of anthropology. Yet diviners within Western societies have been curiously ignored. Van Dijk's and Pels’ (1996) concept of the ‘politics of perception’ is discussed as a means of under‐standing why this is the case. Redressing this gap, I study the practices and experiences of an American psychic. This ethnographic material helps to move us beyond the patient‐client dialogue to address the internal processes of the diviners themselves. The reflexive exegesis of Elizabeth, an American diviner, reveals the spontaneous, visual nature of her practice and also highlights the role of the senses and emotions in divination. Other examples of sensory experience, such as in cases of blindness, show that those senses deemed lower down’ in the hierarchy of perception can be accurate modes of gaining knowledge of the world.     

Sensory Shifts and ‘Synaesthetics’ in Sukuma Healing

Sensorial anthropologies come, broadly speaking, in two forms. The first, multi-sensory approach depicts cultures as specializing in a sensory mode such as tactility (Howes) or kinaesthesia (Geurts) and associates individual cultures with one dominant mode. The second, cross-sensory approach rejects this sensorial essentialization (Ingold) and suggests that cultures differ in their ‘perspectives’ or, as I suggest, in sensory ‘codes’. However, the article argues that this latter approach verges on cultural essentialization as it overlooks the presence in any one culture of multiple sensory ‘codes’ and culturally warranted shifts between them. In this article on the Sukuma in northwestern Tanzania I outline an approach that takes into account both the modes and codes of sensory perception. I focus on the visual mode, and shifts between different codes, in Sukuma rituals of divination, exorcism and spirit possession.     

Multisensory integration of colors and scents: insights from bees and flowers

Karl von Frisch’s studies of bees’ color vision and chemical senses opened a window into the perceptual world of a species other than our own. A century of subsequent research on bees’ visual and olfactory systems has developed along two productive but independent trajectories, leaving the questions of how and why bees use these two senses in concert largely unexplored. Given current interest in multimodal communication and recently discovered interplay between olfaction and vision in humans and Drosophila, understanding multisensory integration in bees is an opportunity to advance knowledge across fields. Using a classic ethological framework, we formulate proximate and ultimate perspectives on bees’ use of multisensory stimuli. We discuss interactions between scent and color in the context of bee cognition and perception, focusing on mechanistic and functional approaches, and we highlight opportunities to further explore the development and evolution of multisensory integration. We argue that although the visual and olfactory worlds of bees are perhaps the best-studied of any non-human species, research focusing on the interactions between these two sensory modalities is vitally needed.     

Remote touch prey‐detection by Madagascar crested ibises Lophotibis cristata urschi

Birds that forage by probing must often rely on sensory systems other than vision to detect their buried prey. Such senses may include hearing (e.g. Australian magpies (Atramidae), American robins (Turdidae)) or chemical senses/olfaction (e.g. kiwi (Apterygidae) and some shorebirds (Scolopacidae)). Probe foraging kiwi and shorebirds are also able to use vibrotactile cues to locate prey buried in the substrate at some distance from their bill‐tips (‘remote touch’). These birds possess an organ consisting of a honey‐comb of sensory pits in bone of the bill‐tips, packed with mechanoreceptive nerve ending (Herbst corpuscles). Such a bill‐tip organ has recently also been described in ibises (Threskiornithinae), but its function not elucidated. We designed a foraging experiment presenting mealworm prey to three captive Madagascar crested ibises Lophotibis cristata urschi under a variety of trial conditions to discover whether they were using remote touch, mediated by their bill‐tip organ; chemosense/olfaction; or hearing to locate buried prey. The ibises were reliant on remote touch for prey detection – the first time this sensory system has been demonstrated for this group of birds. They did not appear to use hearing or chemical senses/olfaction to aid in prey detection.     

Bayesian multisensory integration and cross-modal spatial links.

Our perception of the word is the result of combining information between several senses, such as vision, audition and proprioception. These sensory modalities use widely different frames of reference to represent the properties and locations of object. Moreover, multisensory cues come with different degrees of reliability, and the reliability of a given cue can change in different contexts. The Bayesian framework--which we describe in this review--provides an optimal solution to deal with this issue of combining cues that are not equally reliable. However, this approach does not address the issue of frames of references. We show that this problem can be solved by creating cross-modal spatial links in basis function networks. Finally, we show how the basis function approach can be combined with the Bayesian framework to yield networks that can perform optimal multisensory combination. On the basis of this theory, we argue that multisensory integration is a dialogue between sensory modalities rather that the convergence of all sensory information onto a supra-modal area.     

From signal perception to signal transduction: ligand‐induced dimeric switch of DctB sensory domain in solution

Sinorhizobium meliloti DctB is a typical transmembrane sensory histidine kinase, which senses C₄‐dicarboxylic acids (DCA) and regulates the expression of DctA, the DCA transporter. We previously reported the crystal structures of its periplasmic sensory domain (DctBp) in apo and succinate‐bound states, and these structures showed dramatic conformational changes at dimeric level. Here we show a ligand‐induced dimeric switch in solution and a strong correlation between DctBp's dimerization states and the in vivo activities of DctB. Using site‐directed mutagenesis, we identify important determinants for signal perception and transduction. Specifically, we show that the ligand‐binding pocket is essential for DCA‐induced ‘on’ activity of DctB. Mutations at different sections of DctBp's dimerization interface can lock full‐length DctB at either ‘on’ or ‘off’ state, independent of ligand binding. Taken together, these results suggest that DctBp's signal perception and transduction occur through a ‘ligand‐induced dimeric switch’, in which the changes in the dimeric conformations upon ligand binding are responsible for the signal transduction in DctB.     

The Sensorial Production of the Social

In China temple festivals are replete with noises, sights, smells, tastes, and ambient sensory productions. When worshipers converge on a particular temple festival, they produce and experience honghuo (social heat or red-hot sociality). This native concept of honghuo highlights the importance of the social production of a heightened sensory ambience as well as the sensorial production of sociality. In co-producing honghuo the festivalgoers are exhibiting a ‘resonant body-person’ that is in accord with the spirit of mutual responsiveness. I propose a sensory-production model of sensory analysis that foregrounds the active participatory role of social agents in producing a sensorially rich social world. This model extends from, yet also critiques the prevalent cultural phenomenological approach to investigating sensory orders in different cultures. A ‘mindful body’ or an ‘attentive body’ is only the pre-condition for any person's action-full lifeworld.     

A sense of scale: Foraging cetaceans' use of scale‐dependent multimodal sensory systems

Research on cetacean foraging ecology is central to our understanding of their spatial and behavioral ecology. Yet, functional mechanisms by which cetaceans detect prey across different scales remain unclear. Here, I postulate that cetaceans utilize a scale‐dependent, multimodal sensory system to assess and increase prey encounters. I review the literature on cetacean sensory systems related to foraging ecology, and hypothesize the effective scales of each sensory modality to inform foraging opportunities. Next, I build two “scale‐of‐senses” schematics for the general groups of dolphins and baleen whales. These schematics illustrate the hypothetical interchange of sensory modalities used to locate and discriminate prey at spatial scales ranging from 0 m to 1,000 km: (1) vision, (2) audition (sound production and sound reception), (3) chemoreception, (4) magnetoreception, and somatosensory perception of (5) prey, or (6) oceanographic stimuli. The schematics illustrate how a cetacean may integrate sensory modalities to form an adaptive foraging landscape as a function of distance to prey. The scale‐of‐senses schematic is flexible, allowing for case‐specific application and enhancement with improved cetacean sensory data. The framework serves to improve our understanding of functional cetacean foraging ecology, and to develop new hypotheses, methods, and results regarding how cetaceans forage at multiple scales.     

触觉受体NOMPC及听觉受体TMC的发现

人类感觉包括:视觉、听觉、嗅觉、味觉、触觉,还有温觉、痛觉等.生物体是如何感知物理世界的问题一直吸引着人类,虽然在不同感知觉受体的发现及研究过程中不断取得新的突破性进展,但是对这些感知觉基础生物学层面的理解仍然有限.2021年度诺贝尔生理学或医学奖授予感知觉研究领域,以表彰David Julius和Ardem Pata...     

Non-visual crypsis: a review of the empirical evidence for camouflage to senses other than vision

I review the evidence that organisms have adaptations that confer difficulty of detection by predators and parasites that seek their targets primarily using sensory systems other than vision. In other words, I will answer the question of whether crypsis is a concept that can usefully be applied to non-visual sensory perception. Probably because vision is such an important sensory system in humans, research in this field is sparse. Thus, at present we have very few examples of chemical camouflage, and even these contain some ambiguity in deciding whether they are best seen as examples of background matching or mimicry. There are many examples of organisms that are adaptively silent at times or in locations when or where predation risk is higher or in response to detection of a predator. By contrast, evidence that the form (rather than use) of vocalizations and other sound-based signals has been influenced by issues of reducing detectability to unintended receivers is suggestive rather than conclusive. There is again suggestive but not completely conclusive evidence for crypsis against electro-sensing predators. Lastly, mechanoreception is highly understudied in this regard, but there are scattered reports that strongly suggest that some species can be thought of as being adapted to be cryptic in this modality. Hence, I conclude that crypsis is a concept that can usefully be applied to senses other than vision, and that this is a field very much worthy of more investigation.     

Time at a Standstill: Loss,Accumulation, and the Past Conditional in an East Berlin Neighborhood

This article reconsiders the question of nostalgic consumption in East Germany as embedded not within a national or a regional (post-socialist) politics of time, as much literature has done, but rather within a global post-Fordist reconfiguration of the relation between time, consumption, and politics. Examining an underclass East Berlin neighborhood that has come to epitomize ‘pastness’, I show the salience of material prosperity – or its lack – in shaping the senses of time of its inhabitants. Especially for the younger generation, nostalgic commodities mediate the growing abyss between loss and accumulation, futures and pasts, nostalgic longings and unrealistic aspirations. I argue that the nexus of time, politics, and consumption has been transformed with the fading away of what has been called the future perfect (the political temporality of utopian projects) and its metamorphosis into what I term here the past conditional, the temporality of lost futures, irredeemable opportunities, and vanquished political imaginaries.     

Talking Pleasures,Writing Dialects. Outlining Research on Schmecka

This text is written in English so that it may reach an international academic audience. However, if all academic research comes to be outlined in English we are to lose a lot. Here, we argue this by presenting the case of schmecka. Drawing on fieldwork done in the Austrian region of Vorarlberg, we suggest that the word schmecka differs from the factual ‘flavour perception’ investigated in physiology; from the culturally informed ‘sensory experiences’ explored by anthropologists and even from the sociological ‘tasting in practice’. For one, schmecka is shared between modest good food and assembled eaters; two, it draws together the English ‘tasting’ and ‘smelling’; and three, it has positive overtones. This means that using schmecka is not just judicious when writing about ‘others’, here the people of Vorarlberg. It also, more interestingly, allows ‘us’ to write in another way: one that foregrounds valuing rather than facting.     

Sensory Perception: An Overlooked Target of Occupational Exposure to Metals

The effect of exposure to industrial metals on sensory perception of workers has received only modest interest from the medical community to date. Nevertheless, some experimental and epidemiological data exist showing that industrial metals can affect vision, hearing and olfactory function, and a similar effect is also suggested for touch and taste. In this review the main industrial metals involved are discussed. An important limit in available knowledge is that, to date, the number of chemicals studied is relatively small. Another is that the large majority of the studies have evaluated the effect of a single chemical on a single sense. As an example, we know that mercury can impair hearing, smell, taste, touch and also vision, but we have scant idea if, in the same worker, a relation exists between impairments in different senses, or if impairments are independent. Moreover, workers are frequently exposed to different chemicals; a few available results suggest that a co-exposure may have no effect, or result in both an increase and a decrease of the effect, as observed for hearing loss, but this aspect certainly deserves much more study. As a conclusion, exposure to industrial metals can affect sensory perception, but knowledge of this effect is yet incomplete, and is largely inadequate especially for an estimation of “safe” thresholds of exposure. These data support the desirability of further good quality studies in this field.     

The odour of things: Smell and the cultural elaboration of disgust in Eastern Indonesia

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of calls for anthropology to devote more attention to non‐visual modes of perception. Frequently, the implicit suggestion of these calls has been that the acknowledgement of different ways of organising the senses could help us escape the supposed malaise of modern ‘ocular‐centrism ‘. This paper explores the sense and symbolism of smell in Buli, a village in eastern Indonesia, to argue that smell is part of an ontology that catches Buli people in a malaise of their own. ‘Bad’ smell attests to an ambiguous moral order that can be traced across myth, ritual and everyday life. Ambiguity is ever‐present because ‘bad’ or disgusting smells destabilise the very conceptual order they also help support. The analysis of smells as they relate to local notions of disgust is therefore suggested as an alternative way to conceptualise the contradictory nature of power.     

Negative BOLD differentiates visual imagery and perception

Recent studies emphasize the overlap between the neural substrates of visual perception and visual imagery. However, the subjective experiences of imagining and seeing are clearly different. Here we demonstrate that deactivation of auditory cortex (and to some extent of somatosensory and subcortical visual structures) as measured by BOLD functional magnetic resonance imaging unequivocally differentiates visual imagery from visual perception. During visual imagery, auditory cortex deactivation negatively correlates with activation in visual cortex and with the score in the subjective vividness of visual imagery questionnaire (VVIQ). Perception of the world requires the merging of multisensory information so that, during seeing, information from other sensory systems modifies visual cortical activity and shapes experience. We suggest that pure visual imagery corresponds to the isolated activation of visual cortical areas with concurrent deactivation of "irrelevant" sensory processing that could disrupt the image created by our "mind's eye."     

Pollution going multimodal: the complex impact of the human-altered sensory environment on animal perception and performance

Anthropogenic sensory pollution is affecting ecosystems worldwide. Human actions generate acoustic noise, emanate artificial light and emit chemical substances. All of these pollutants are known to affect animals. Most studies on anthropogenic pollution address the impact of pollutants in unimodal sensory domains. High levels of anthropogenic noise, for example, have been shown to interfere with acoustic signals and cues. However, animals rely on multiple senses, and pollutants often co-occur. Thus, a full ecological assessment of the impact of anthropogenic activities requires a multimodal approach. We describe how sensory pollutants can co-occur and how covariance among pollutants may differ from natural situations. We review how animals combine information that arrives at their sensory systems through different modalities and outline how sensory conditions can interfere with multimodal perception. Finally, we describe how sensory pollutants can affect the perception, behaviour and endocrinology of animals within and across sensory modalities. We conclude that sensory pollution can affect animals in complex ways due to interactions among sensory stimuli, neural processing and behavioural and endocrinal feedback. We call for more empirical data on covariance among sensory conditions, for instance, data on correlated levels in noise and light pollution. Furthermore, we encourage researchers to test animal responses to a full-factorial set of sensory pollutants in the presence or the absence of ecologically important signals and cues. We realize that such approach is often time and energy consuming, but we think this is the only way to fully understand the multimodal impact of sensory pollution on animal performance and perception.     

Beauty in the eyes of the beholders: colour vision is tuned to mate preference in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

A broad range of animals use visual signals to assess potential mates, and the theory of sensory exploitation suggests variation in visual systems drives mate preference variation due to sensory bias. Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata), a classic system for studies of the evolution of female mate choice, provide a unique opportunity to test this theory by looking for covariation in visual tuning, light environment and mate preferences. Female preference co‐evolves with male coloration, such that guppy females from ‘low‐predation’ environments have stronger preferences for males with more orange/red coloration than do females from ‘high‐predation’ environments. Here, we show that colour vision also varies across populations, with ‘low’‐predation guppies investing more of their colour vision to detect red/orange coloration. In independently colonized watersheds, guppies expressed higher levels of both LWS‐1 and LWS‐3 (the most abundant LWS opsins) in ‘low‐predation’ populations than ‘high‐predation’ populations at a time that corresponds to differences in cone cell abundance. We also observed that the frequency of a coding polymorphism differed between high‐ and low‐predation populations. Together, this shows that the variation underlying preference could be explained by simple changes in expression and coding of opsins, providing important candidate genes to investigate the genetic basis of female preference variation in this model system.