Chapter 7 Flashcards
What are the two main divisions of the nervous system?
the Central Nervous System (CNS) and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). The CNS includes the brain and spinal cord, while the PNS includes the somatic and autonomic systems.
Describe the functions of the somatic nervous system.
somatic nervous system transmits sensory information from the senses to the CNS and sends motor commands to skeletal muscles, enabling voluntary movements.
What are the functions of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems?
sympathetic system prepares the body for “fight or flight” during stress, while the parasympathetic system promotes “rest and digest” activities during relaxation.
What are the four main lobes of the brain and their primary functions?
Frontal Lobe:Motor control, planning, decision-making, and problem-solving.
Parietal Lobe:Sensation, perception, and integrating sensory information.
Occipital Lobe: Visual processing.
Temporal Lobe: Hearing, memory, meaning, and language.
What is the role of the limbic system?
Regulates emotions, memory, and motivation. Key components include the hippocampus (memory), amygdala (emotion/aggression), hypothalamus (basic needs), and thalamus (sensory relay).
Define sensation and perception.
Sensation is the process by which sensory organs gather information from the environment. Perception involves organizing and interpreting these sensations in the brain.
What is transduction, and why is it important in sensation?
Transduction is the conversion of environmental energy into neural signals. Specialized cells (receptors) transform stimuli (e.g., light, sound) into impulses the brain can interpret.
Explain sensory coding for intensity and quality
Sensory coding involves transmitting the intensity (e.g., brightness, loudness) and quality (e.g., color, pitch) of a stimulus to the brain, which is interpreted based on neural impulse frequency.
What is sensory adaptation, and what evolutionary advantage does it provide?
Sensory adaptation is the reduced sensitivity to unchanging stimuli, which allows organisms to ignore constant stimuli and focus on new, potentially important changes in the environment.
Describe top-down and bottom-up processing in perception.
Top-Down Processing: Uses context and prior knowledge to interpret sensory information (e.g., perceiving patterns based on experience).
Bottom-Up Processing: Relies solely on the sensory input, building perception from raw data to form an overall image.
What is the Necker Cube, and how does it demonstrate top-down processing?
The Necker Cube is an optical illusion where the brain perceives two different orientations. It shows that perception can change without a change in sensory input, highlighting the brain’s role in interpretation.
Function of the ear
(Sensation –> Perception)
1. Outer ear: collects & magnifies sounds in ear
2. Middle: converts wave of air pressure into movements of tiny bones.
3. Inner: transforms movements to waves of fluid that generate neural signals
What would formation of incorrect hypothesis would lead to:
Errors of perception
What’s the difference between Gregory’s Top-Down Processing and Gibson’s Bottom-Up Processing?
Gregory believed our brains use past experiences and knowledge to help us understand what we’re looking at &
Gibson believed our brains rely on information from the environment alone.
