Integration of Visual and Echoic Information

瓶鼻海豚有一种高效的回声定位感， 使他们能够通过声音来观察他们的物质世界。 通过 发出短时间脉冲声音并聆听回声 海豚能够探测和识别物体。 因为人们缺乏这种意识，我们很难 欣赏心理图像或表征的类型 这些物体可能是通过回声定位形成的。 海豚也 拥有一种有效的视觉， 在空气中。 这些图像或表现形式是通过 类似于视觉的回声定位 能 海豚通过回声定位识别它所观察物体 以前只通过视觉？ 反过来说， 通过视觉，它以前只通过视觉检查过的物体 回声定位？ 这些问题和相关问题在一套 在Kawalo Basin Marine对海豚进行的实验研究 夏威夷大学哺乳动物实验室。 通过检查 可以在整个系统中识别的对象的类型或属性。 两种感觉，研究人员将开始发展想法， 海豚用它的回声定位感“看到”了什么。 更 从根本上说，这项研究还将提供有关 理论问题的程度，信息从 不同的感觉是集中在一起的--可以称之为 关于感官的统一与独立的问题。 一些 在对人类和非人类的研究中， 视觉和触觉之间的关系。 在海豚身上是否也有类似程度的感觉统一， 非灵长类哺乳动物，有许多表现出的智力 与非人类灵长类动物相似的能力吗 什么 海豚的这种能力是否会增加关于 鲸目动物和灵长类动物大脑的智力进化， 两千万年来都沿着不同的路径前进 上 应用水平，可能是回声“可视化”的描述， 一只海豚提供了新的见解 智能声纳装置？

Bottlenosed dolphins have a highly efficient echolocation sense, enabling them to examine their physical world through sound. By emitting short-duration pulsed sounds and listening to the echoes received, dolphins are able to detect and identify objects. Because people lack this sense, it is difficult for us to appreciate the types of mental images or representations of objects that may be formed through echolocation. Dolphins also possess an efficient visual sense that is useful both underwater and in air. Are the images or representations formed through echolocation similar to those formed through vision? Can a dolphin recognize through echolocation an object it has inspected previously only through vision? Conversely, can it recognize through vision an object it has inspected previously only through echolocation? These and related questions are addressed in a set of experimental studies with dolphins at the Kawalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory of the University of Hawaii. By examining the types or attributes of objects that may be recognized across the two senses, the researchers will begin to develop ideas about what a dolphin "sees" with its echolocation sense. More fundamentally, the research will also provide information on the theoretical question of the degree to which information from different senses is integrated centrally--what may be called the issue of the unity versus the independence of the senses. Some degree of unity is seen in studies with humans and nonhuman primates of the relationships between vision and active touch. Does a similar degree of sensory unity occur in the dolphin, a nonprimate mammal with many demonstrated intellectual capabilities paralleling those found for nonhuman primates? What might such ability in a dolphin add to ideas about the convergent evolution of intelligence in cetacean and primate brains, which have traced different paths for some 20 million years? On an applied level, might the description of echoic "visualization" by a dolphin offer fresh insights into the construction of intelligent sonar apparatus?