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I think Anna brings an excellent addition to the 'furthering of the battery argument' analogy that I made just above. Anna's statement about how all of the action potentials are the same, but that input and output signals are different is quite interesting. Perhaps another battery anology can account for this phenomenon, and also about the switching of various sensory (visual and audio) "boxes" that was mentioned above in the forum:

Every battery contains potential energy that can be transferred into some sort of circuit or system. BUT, if the incorrect type of battery is inserted into a system, nothing will work. Auditory and visual sensations are both recieved and translated from the nervous system via the same medium, action potentials. Similarly, a 9V battery and a AAA battery both put energy into a system using the same form of battery juice medium. So, just like my AAA-battery Texas Instruments graphing calculator will not run on a 9V battery, the auditory and visual sensations will not run/function on each other's action potential in the event of a switch. I'm not sure if this helps with any of the above-mentioned confusions...but I think that the idea of limits existing between multiple methods of communication that function on the same medium is important.