perception Flashcards
psychophysics
- scientific study of subjective experience of perception
- relationship between physical stimuli and psychology
- psychophysics techniques enable researchers to take reliable measurements of what people see, hear, feel, etc
types of senses
sight
hearing
smell (olfactory)
taste (gustatory)
touch (tactile/haptic, skin)
balance (equilibrioception, vestibular system)
body awareness (proprioreception, joints)
heat (thermoception)
body senses (somatosensation)
haptics
thermmoception
proprioreception
equilibrioception
Extrasensory perception (ESP)/sixth sense is bullshit
what is perception
perception is the brains interpretation of sensory input
- study of how we get info about our environment
- only way we get info about our environment
- can only directly perceive a small amount of the info in our environment
sensation
detection of physical energy by the sense of organs
sensory integration
sometimes information from 2 or more senses is integrated by our brains (eg smelling flavour)
chemical senses
taste (gustation)
smell
taste
(gustation)
- allows us to detect certain chemicals in the food and drinks we put in our mouths and eat
- taste receptors in clumps
1. taste buds
2. located on small projections on the tongue called papillae - respond to chemicals dissolved in salvia
- chemical specific
- 5 confirmed taste receptors
1. salt, sweet, sour, bitter, umami
2. when a food with certain chemicals is consumed, respective receptors are activated (eg eating sugar activates sweet receptors) - tongue map theory (taste receptors are on specific parts of the tongue) is WRONG SINCE 1974
smell
- most flavour is due to the simultaneous activation of our senses of taste and smell
- sensory integration
- only dissolved chemials (in the mucus of the nose) can activate the smell receptors
- certain smell receptors respond to particular chemicals and al the smells we experience are some combination of the activations of these primary smells
1. at least 7 primary smell receptors
2. many were discovered by investigation specific anosmias - smell blindnesses - process
- odours activate receptors in the olfactory
epithelium at the top of the nasal cavity - these receptors synapse directly onto the olfactory
bulb
olfactory bulb: specialised part of the brain for
processing smells - smell bypasses the usual route from sense organ to brain (via thalamus) which suggests that smell was highly important for our ancestors
- odours activate receptors in the olfactory
the body senses
touch (haptic/tactile)
balance (equilibrioreception)
body senses (proprioreception)
touch (haptic/tactile)
- various layers of skin contain an array of receptors with a range of sizes and shapes
1. we know little about what they do
2. thalamus then to the somatosensory cortex
3. conveys information of:
. pressure - when touched by something, pressure receptors are activate fthen send their action potential along the neurons to the thalamus first then to the somatosensory cortex for processing
. temperature - same process but with temperature sensors - pain
*receptors in your skin which convert pressure into neural signals - others convert heat enbergy into neural signals
*pain is only a psychological phenomenon - somatosensory cortex
*touch info is conveyed here, at the top of the brain (sits behind motor cortex)
*more important parts of the body (in terms of processing touch info) have larger parts of the somatosensory cortex devoted to them
balance (equilibrioception)
- info about how we are moving in a space
- vestibular systems provides us with info about accelerations we are undergoing and about our orientation relative to vertical
- vestibular system is in the inner ear of each side (next to the cochlea - but that does hearing), has two essential components:
*semicircular canals
