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Perception > Chapter 15 > Flashcards

Chapter 15 Flashcards

1
Q

What are the cutaneous senses?

A

everything we feel through the skin

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2
Q

What is the epidermis?

A

The outer layers of the skin, including a layer of dead skin cells.

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3
Q

What is the dermis?

A

The layer of skin below the epidermis

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4
Q

What are mechanoreceptors?

A

Within the skin are mechanoreceptors, receptors that respond to mechanical stimulation such as pressure, stretching, and vibration.

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5
Q

Explain the two mechanoreceptors:
1) Merkel receptor
2) Meissner corpuscle

A

1) Merkel receptor:
A disk-shaped receptor in the skin associated with slowly adapting fibers and the perception of fine details.

2) Meissner corpuscle:
It has been proposed that the Meissner corpuscle is important for perceiving tactile slip and for controlling the force needed to grip objects.

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6
Q

What are cutaneous receptive fields?

A

Area of skin that, when stimulated, influences the firing of a neuron.

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7
Q

What is a slowly adapting (SA1) fiber?

A

Fires continuously with pressure

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8
Q

What is a rapidly adapting (RA1) fiber?

A

Fires only when touch is applied / removed

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9
Q

What is the Ruffini cylinder?

A

A receptor structure in the skin associated with slowly adapting fibers. It has been proposed that the Ruffini cylinder is involved in perceiving “stretching.”
(slowly adapting (SA2) fiber)

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10
Q

What is the Pacinian corpuscle?

A

A receptor with a distinctive elliptical shape associated with RA2 mechanoreceptors. It transmits pressure to the nerve fiber inside it only at the beginning or end of a pressure stimulus and is responsible for our perception of vibration and fine textures when moving the fingers over a surface.
(is a rapidly adapting fiber (RA2 or PC)

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11
Q

What is the medial lemniscal pathway?

A

A pathway in the spinal cord that transmits signals from the skin toward the thalamus.

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12
Q

What is the spinothalamic pathway?

A

One of the nerve pathways in the spinal cord that conducts nerve impulses from the skin to the somatosensory area of the thalamus.

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13
Q

What sense uses the lateral geniculate nucleus?

A

vision

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14
Q

What sense uses the medial geniculate nucleus?

A

hearing

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15
Q

What are the two areas that receive signals from the thalamus

A

primary somatosensory cortex (S1) in the parietal lobe and the secondary somatosensory cortex (S2)

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16
Q

Explain how the somatosensory cortex is organized into maps that correspond to locations on the body

A

When Penfield stimulated points on the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and asked patients to report what they perceived, they reported sensations such as tingling and touch on various parts of their body. Penfield found that stimulating the ventral part of S1 (lower on the parietal lobe) caused sensations on the lips and face, stimulating higher on S1 caused sensations in the hands and fingers, and stimulating the dorsal S1 caused sensations in the legs and feet.

To Sum: different areas correspond to sensations in diff body parts

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17
Q

Explain the homunculus:

A

Latin for “little man”; refers to the topographic map of the body in the somatosensory cortex.

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18
Q

What is tactile acuity?

A

the capacity to detect details of stimuli presented to the skin
(The smallest details that can be detected on the skin.)

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19
Q

Explain the classic method of measuring tactile acuity: two-point threshold,

A

The two-point threshold is measured by gently touching the skin with two points, such as the points of a drawing compass, and having the person indicate whether he or she feels one point or two.

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20
Q

Explain grating acuity and how it is measured:

A

Determines which direction detailed lines are going on a grooved object. For seeing how much detail we can decipher.

Grating acuity is measured by pressing a grooved stimulus like the one in Figure 15.7b onto the skin and asking the person to indicate the orientation of the grating

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21
Q

Explain the difference between Merkel receptors and Pacinian corpuscles:

A

Merkel receptors are very tuned to details (ex. grooved object - it will fire a lot)
There is a high density of these in the fingertips - which makes sense cuz that’s the most sensitive part of the body

Pacinian corpuscles don’t respond to grooved objects like Merkel ones do. Which means this receptor is not sensitive to the details of patterns that are pushed onto the skin

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22
Q

Explain the receptive fields of the fingers vs the arm/back

A

The receptive fields in the fingers don’t overlap - which allows much more acuity and detail.
The receptive fields on less sensitive parts will overlap.

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23
Q

What does the Pacinian corpuscle do?

Why?

A

primarily responsible for sensing vibration

Why? poorly to slow or constant pushing but respond well to high rates of vibration.

Its also got a round shape - so continuous pressure just indents the shape - but vibrations travel through

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24
Q

What is Surface texture?

A

The visual and tactile quality of a physical surface created by peaks and valleys.

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25
Q

Explain the two results of a monkey having a texture scanned across its fingertip

A

(1)
different textures caused different firing patterns in an individual neuron (compare records from left to right, across textures, for a particular neuron), and

(2)
different neurons responded differently to the same texture (compare records from top to bottom for a specific texture).

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25
Q

What is the duplex theory of texture perception

A

coarser textures (larger elements) are mainly perceived by spatial cues (skin touches something), whereas finer textures are mainly perceived through temporal cues (skin moves across something)

26
Q

What is active touch?

A

Touch in which the observer plays an active role in touching and exploring an object, usually with his or her hands.

27
Q

What is passive touch?

A

A situation in which a person passively receives tactile stimulation.

28
Q

What is haptic perception?

A

The perception of three-dimensional objects by touch

29
Q

what are the three distinct systems we use to arrive at your goal of identifying objects?

A

(1) the sensory system, which was involved in detecting cutaneous sensations such as touch, temperature, and texture and the movements and positions of your fingers and hands;

(2)
the motor system, which was involved in moving your fingers and hands; and

(3)
the cognitive system, which was involved in thinking about the information provided by the sensory and motor systems.

30
Q

What are the exploratory procedures (EPs) we use to identify objects?

A

People’s movements of their hands and fingers while they are identifying three-dimensional objects by touch.

31
Q

Explain how Cortical Neurons Are Specialized?

A

There are neurons that respond to specific orientations and neurons that respond to movement across the skin in a specified direction.
(ex. This neuron responds best when a horizontally oriented edge is presented to the monkey’s hand)

32
Q

Explain how the cortical neurons respond specifically to objects?

A

This neuron responds when the monkey grasps the ruler but does not respond when the monkey grasps a cylinder or a sphere

33
Q

How is Cortical Responding Affected by Attention

A

even though the monkey is receiving exactly the same stimulation on its fingertips in both conditions, the response is larger when they are asked to focus on it.

34
Q

One person touching another person, which is called…

A

interpersonal touching or social touch

35
Q

What are nerve fibers called CT afferents?

A

Unmyelinated nerve fibers found in hairy skin, which have been shown to be involved in social touch.

These fibers are unmyelinated, which means that they are not covered by the myelin sheath that covers the fibers associated with the receptors in glabrous skin.

36
Q

what is microneurography?

A

Technique used to record neural signals that involves inserting a metal electrode with a very fine tip just under the skin.

37
Q

what is the social touch hypothesis?

A

Hypothesis that CT afferents and their central projections are responsible for social touch

38
Q

What are the two aspects of touch attributed to social touch?

A

discriminative functions of touch—sensing details, texture, vibration, and objects. The CT system, in contrast, is the basis of the

affective function of touch—sensing pleasure and therefore often eliciting positive emotions.

39
Q

What is Inflammatory pain?

A

Pain caused by damage to tissues, inflammation of joints, or tumor cells. This damage releases chemicals that create an “inflammatory soup” that activates nociceptors.

40
Q

What is Neuropathic pain?

A

Pain caused by lesions or other damage to the nervous system.

41
Q

What is Nociceptive pain?

A

pain caused by activation of receptors in the skin called nociceptors, which are specialized to respond to tissue damage or potential damage

42
Q

What is the direct pathway model of pain?

A

The idea that pain occurs when nociceptor receptors in the skin are stimulated and send their signals to the brain. This model does not account for the fact that pain can be affected by other factors in addition to stimulation of the skin.

43
Q

Explain phantom limb

A

A person’s continued perception of a limb, such as an arm or a leg, even though the limb has been amputated.

44
Q

Why do some wounds not feel painful (WW2 example)

A

World War II “entirely denied pain from their extensive wounds or had so little that they did not want any medication to relieve it”. One reason for this was that the soldiers’ wounds had a positive aspect: they provided escape from a hazardous battlefield to the safety of a behind-the-lines hospital.

45
Q

What is the gate control model of pain?

A

idea that pain signals enter the spinal cord from the body and are then transmitted from the spinal cord to the brain. In addition, the model proposes that there are additional pathways that influence the signals sent from the spinal cord to the brain. The central idea behind the theory is that signals from these additional pathways can act to open or close a gate, located in the spinal cord, which determines the strength of the signal leaving the spinal cord.

46
Q

Explain the three pathways the gate control system occurs along
1. Nociceptors.
2. Mechanoreceptors.
3. Central control

A
  1. Nociceptors.
    only excitatory synapses
    Send the signals to the transmission cells to hold the gate open.
  2. Mechanoreceptors.
    mechanoreceptors carry information about nonpainful tactile stimulation.
    Close gate
  3. Central control
    contain information related to cognitive functions such as expectation, attention, and distraction, carry signals down from the cortex
    decreases pain
47
Q

What is a placebo?

A

A substance that a person believes will relieve symptoms such as pain but that contains no chemicals that actually act on these symptoms.

48
Q

What is the placebo effect?

A

A relief from symptoms resulting from a substance that has no pharmacological effect

49
Q

What is the nocebo effect?

A

A negative placebo effect, characterized by a negative response to negative expectations.

50
Q

How does attention effect pain?

A

If we are not focused on it, wont be as painful

51
Q

How does a positive mood / experience effect pain?

A

Makes the pain feel better!

Negative doesn’t really do much

52
Q

What is the multimodal nature of pain?

A

The fact that the experience of pain has both sensory and emotional components.

53
Q

What words do you use to describe the sensory component of pain?

A

Pain perception described with terms such as throbbing, prickly, hot, or dull

54
Q

What words do you use to describe the affective (or emotional) component of pain?

A

When they use words like torturing, annoying, frightful, or sickening

55
Q

Places that detect pain in the brain:

A

They include subcortical structures, such as the hypothalamus, the amygdala, and the thalamus, and areas in the cortex, including the somatosensory cortex (S1), the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the prefrontal cortex (PFC), and the insula

To Sum: Places all over the brain

56
Q

What is opioids?

A

A chemical such as opium, heroin, and other molecules with related structures that reduce pain and induce feelings of euphoria

57
Q

What is naloxone?

A

A substance that inhibits the activity of opiates. It is hypothesized that naloxone also inhibits the activity of endorphins and therefore can have an effect on pain perception.

58
Q

What are endorphins?

A

Chemical that is naturally produced in the brain and that causes analgesia (the inability to feel pain)

59
Q

What is empathy?

A

The ability to share and vicariously experience what someone else is feeling.

60
Q

What is social pain?

A

Pain caused by negative social situations, such as rejection.

61
Q

What is physical-social pain overlap hypothesis?

A

Proposal that pain resulting from negative social experiences is processed by some of the same neural circuitry that processes physical pain.

62
Q

Explain the case of hand dystonia with concert pianist Leon Fleisher

A

eventually, after 30 years of therapy, regained the use of his right hand and was able to resume his career as a two-handed pianist.

63
Q

Explain: Plasticity and the Brain

A

They gave the monkey a task that heavily stimulated the tip of finger 2 over a three-month period and then remeasured the areas devoted to the fingers. Comparison of the “before” and “after” cortical maps showed that the area representing the stimulated fingertip was greatly expanded after the training.

Perception (14 decks)

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