This week my goal is to make my research narrower by choosing a focus that works with

what I want to do. At the beginning of the week I started to become stuck in what I was reaching
because I couldnt get the wording down for what I exactly wanted to look up. However, now
since Ive been introduced to multisensory integration Im able to go to further with where my
research is going. I also want to be able to connect the information I have on multisensory
integration with my original intent of connecting our senses to our perception. I want to be able
to synthesize everything together and from there gather articles that flourish the ideas that I
already have.
My initial essential question was How is perception influenced by senses other than
sight? I was able find some articles that answered this question but after a while it became
harder to find new insightful information without revolving around the same type of information.
I think that I want to change my essential question to involve something with the senses,
perception, and the brain. With those intentions I think that my essential question can be How
does our brain process our senses to produce our perception? I think that this question more
closely aligns with the research I have now and it still relates to my original questions but is
more specific and allows me to incorporation the new information that Im excited to look
further intomultisensory integration.
Some trends that Ive noticed now is that the senses and perception have a chicken-egg
relationship, theyre both intertwined with one another. Ive also found that studies on
multisensory integration arent very relatable in the real world. However, I havent been able to
find anything connecting the loss of a sense, conditions such as hereditary sensory autonomic
neuropathy (HSAN) and anosmia. Those might need to be left out because that would require
focusing on neuropathways and the nervous system. I also see similarities in how senses like
taste and touch have on our perception of objects and food. Ive analyzed at least two articles that
mentioned how we perceive directly through touch. This could also be used to explain HSAN
and what people with that condition arent able to perceive what their body is doing. Ive also
seen articles that discussed how we used our perception for survival and one of the biggest
means of survival we have is through food. I could connect this to anosmia and how dangerous
not having smell is. But all of these ideas are not concise and dont necessarily answer my
question.
One the biggest pieces of information I believe I will be able to use to answer my
essential question is that the part of the brain that is in charge of multisensory integration is the
superior colliculus. I havent been able to look too far into this because I just read this article but
I think that this will be a prominent part of the brain aspect of my question. I can also use the
personal anecdotes from my sixth annotated artifact in order to make connections between the
brain and the nerves that are involved in parts of the body where we most experience our senses.
For next week I want to find more defining information for the superior colliculus. At this
point in my research on this part of the brain, I know nothing and by next week I want to change
that. I also was to find some articles that detail studies or experiments about multisensory
integration. I could also possibly look into neurons and the nervous system in order to connect
HSAN to everything else that Im talking about. If it would be beneficial to answering my new
essential question, I would like to research how our senses contributed to our survival in our
more animalistic/instinctual part of history.