Senses and sensation

Sharks possess an electrosensory system which allows the detection of
electric fields . How this system varies among related taxa and among species
inhabiting different environments remains unexplored. Electroreceptor number
was quantified for representative species of related taxa (genera, families, orders)
from different environments (pelagic, coastal, deepwater) and taxa from similar
environments to determine potential phylogenetic constraint or evolutionary
convergence. Coastal open water sharks possess the greatest number of
electroreceptors; deepwater sharks the least. Pelagic and coastal benthic sharks
retain comparable electrosensory pore numbers despite inhabiting vastly different
environments. Electrosensory pores were primarily located in ventral
distributions, except among coastal open water sharks which possess roughly
even distributions around the head. Among related species and genera, pore
numbers and distribution are comparable, with greater variation among higher
taxa. Results implicate evolutionary convergence as the primary influence in
electroreceptor development, while phylogenetic constraint establishes similar
base values for number and distribution.

The practice of yoga is an increasingly popularized movement within the West that incorporates the desire for physical fitness, spiritual consciousness, and environmentalism. Emanating from the New Age movement, the popularity of yoga has proliferated as a subculture that seeks to encourage mind–body wellbeing while representing an ethos that assumes environmental responsibility. This thesis examines the techniques of modern yoga and the influence that asana (posture) and meditational relaxation have on the senses and subsequently on environmental awareness and activism.

Olfactory sensory neurons (OSN) expressing the same odor receptor (OR) project their axons to topographically fixed glomeruli in the olfactory bulb (OB). This topographic map results from axon guidance mechanisms determined by ORs, glia and molecular guidance cues. The present study examined the organization of mature OSNs expressing the P2 OR in adult mice after ablation of bulb neurons with N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA). Rapid neuronal degeneration was followed by progressive laminar disorganization of the OB and glomerular shrinkage. P2 axon targeting and convergence was maintained within degenerating glomeruli for up to 2 weeks. After that time, fewer P2 axons were observed in the lesioned OB with fewer P2 neurons in the olfactory epithelium (OE). By 3 weeks, the mature OSN population was reduced and the immature population was increased. These results suggest that bulbar synaptic contacts do not maintain sensory axon convergence in the adult, but regulate neuronal survival in the OE.

This study examines whether forming a single identity is crucial to learning to bind faces and voices, or if people are equally able to do so without tying this information to an identity. To test this, individuals learned paired faces and voices that were in one of three different conditions: True voice, Gender Matched, or Gender Mismatched conditions. Performance was measured in a training phase as well as a test phase, and results show that participants were able to learn more quickly and have higher overall performance for learning in the True Voice and Gender Matched conditions. During the test phase, performance was almost at chance in the Gender Mismatched condition which may mean that learning in the training phase was simply memorization of the pairings for this condition. Results support the hypothesis that learning to bind faces and voices is a process that involves forming a supramodal identity from multisensory learning.

The Greek term synaesthesia, which literally translates into 'perceiving together,' is known among most literary critics as the mixing of sensations. The term is applied in literature to the description of one kind of sensation in terms of another. For instance: 'hearing' a color or 'seeing' a 'smell.' That is, the description of sounds in terms of colors such as a "blue note;" of colors in terms of sound such as "loud shirt;" of sound in terms of taste such as "how sweet the sound;" and of colors in terms of temperature such as a "cool green." Although synaesthesia has been used by a variety of poets throughout the centuries, my focus will be on its use in the poetry of John Keats and Emily Dickinson. While critics and scholars have considered this subject before, normally it is approached in terms of its specific meaning within a particular poem. In contrast, I argue that Keats and Dickinson employ synaesthesia to crystallize a poetic perspective, a literary world view, and that this perspective significantly pertains to a variety of gender issues in the nineteenth century. Consequently, I contend that both poets were dealing with the large theme of an imaginative poetic world in which synaesthesia transmutes and synthesizes gender so that a "blue note," male and female, are radically the same and yet "other." After reviewing the scholarship of synaesthesia in Keats's and Dickinson's poetry, I will analyze a series of poems that illustrate my thesis, fleshing out the implications of a gender synthesis that makes us see both poets challenging and subverting the gendered commonplaces of the 19th century.