1.3.2 Sensory Transduction Overview Flashcards
What are the characteristics of psychophysics?
What are receptive fields?
What is the function of sensory receptors?
What are the 4 qualities of stimuli transmitted by sensory systems?
Detect and discriminate information about
Modality
Intensity
Duration
Location
What are power curves and how do they relate to psychophysics?
How does sensation compare to the perception?
How does one process sensory “codes”?
What are the characteristics of Neuronal transduction?
Changes in external or internal environment that reach a sufficient threshold level to generate an electrical action potential, which then propagates down the axon toward higher neuronal structures.
What is important about receptive fields and function?
Dimensions and overlap are important
Smaller receptive fields results in higher acuity
What is convergence at higher CNS structures?
Converting electrical signal in individual neurons into polymodial cognitive information
What are sensory receptors?
Specialized cells for detecting changes in the environment
How do receptive fields relate to retinotophy and tonotopy?
What is somatotopic organization?
Maintain the organization of neurons encoding location of specific stimuli
What is sensation vs perception?
What is stereognosis?
The ability to identify objects based solely on touch
What are the 4 types of sensation?
- 1) Superficial: touch, pain, temperature, and two-point discrimination
- 2) Deep: proprioception, deep muscle pain, and vibration
- 3) Visceral: hung, nausea, and pain
- 4) Special: smell, vision, hearing, taste, and equilibrium
Describe the construction of perception.
Converting coded info into a complete perception of external or internal stimuli ie. the feeling of the sun on your skin
How are sensory inputs coded? How can intensity be altered?
Coding for the sensory input depends on number of neurons or the rate at which neurons are firing; both work to increase intensity of “neural code”
What types of sensations could represent a receptive field?
Small area of skin
dermatome
portion of visual field
specific frequency of sound
taste bud
What are the important characteristics of coding stimulus location? What is a receptive field?
What is creative bias?
Experience shapes perception by resolving ambiguity
What are some examples of convergence controls?
When do receptors generate action potentials?
What is adaptation?
What is the difference between exteroreceptors and proprioreceptors?
- 1) Exteroreceptors: affected mainly be the EXTERNAL environment
- Touch: Meissner’s corpuscles, Merkel’s corpuscles, and hair cell
- Pressure/Vibration: Krause end bulbs
- Stretch: Ruffini endings
- Pain/Temperature: free nerve ending
- 2) Proprioceptors: convey state of INTERNAL environment
- Inputs from Pacinian corpuscles, joint receptors, muscle spindles, and GTOs
