Scientists Settle centuries-old debate on perception

Here's the classic reference to the problem in Locke (which vindicates Locke's speculative answer here):

http://books.google.com/books?id=vjYIAAAAQAAJ&dq=essay%2...

> To which purpose I shall here insert a problem of that very ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr. Molineux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter some months since; and it is this: "Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the cube which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man made to see; quaere, Whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the globe, which the cube?" To which the acute and judicious proposer answers: "Not. For though he has obtained the experience of, how a globe, how a cube, affects his touch; yet he has not yet attained the experience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so; or that a protuberant angle in the cube, that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube." I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this his problem; and am of opinion, that the blind man, at first sight, would not be able, with certainty, to say, which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them; though he could, unerringly, name them by his touch, and certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt.

The physorg article mixes up, at first, the nature/nurture question and the cross-modality of perception question (whether internal representations good for tactile perception are also good for visual perception). Those are very different fundamental questions.

These results were expected by neuroscientists. Different senses are encoded differently in the brain. So, the subjects were unable to link them at first. The surprising thing here is the speed the association between tactile and visual encodings happened, and the article makes that clear.

Did I miss the link to the original puplication, or did they actually fail to include it?

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.27...

I find a study with 5 subjects a bit sparse, but I guess they are quite hard to come by...

I find this very interesting. If I understand this correctly, the suggestions are: (1) the "slate" is relatively "blank" to start with (abstract objects, for instance, do not "exist", in the sense that they are inheritable); (2) a generic ability to abstract could very well be inheritable; (3) the "slate" remains in a "writeable" state longer than previously expected - the right "nurture" can enable the unfolding of potential abilities even relatively late in life (abstract objects can become "real", even though they don't "exist", in the sense that they can become "meaningful").

It sounds like they didn't actually test Molyneux's question at all, or prove anything about perception. It sounds more like an additional data point to nudge our understanding of the brain toward greater plasticity.