capri0mni | (Reply)

From:

...I believe that both taste/smell senses are unmediated

Actually taste and smell are actually just one sense, not 2 -- about 90% of what we percieve as taste actually comes to our brains through the nose, via the "back door" at the back of the mouth (the same channel milk squirts through, if we laugh at the wrong moment). The cluster of tastebuds at the front of the tongue tell us if something is "Sweet" but our olfactory nerves tell us whether it's chocolate, honey, or strawberry (that's why food has no taste, when we get a cold).

I tried to do a search of "Splendid Table"'s archives for the interview on the link between smelling and hearing. But, on a radio show, variations of "Hearing," show up in every single story ("Next, we'll hear about the newest trend..."), and on a cooking show, donn't even try to filter by using "aroma" or "taste"...

From what I remember, this scientist being interviewed was studying the mouse's brain activity while smelling something. And he had electrodes wired into the mouse's brain.

Then, something fell off the counter (or something), and made a loud crashing sound. And the mouse's olfactory receptors started firing like mad right at that moment, before he'd even set up his smelling experiment.

and the retina back in the skull as well

Actually, I've seen several places where Neuroscientists say that the eyes are the brain -- the one part of the brain that's not covered by the skull.

But you're right in one sense: sight does allow us to perceive things from a distance, so that sense is the least "embodied."