Sensation and Perception Flashcards
Sensory receptors
Specialized neurons that transduce some form of energy into neural activity
Receptive fields
The receptor area which when stimulated results in a response of a particular sensory neuron; region of sensory space in which a stimulus modifies a receptor’s activity
Receptive fields give rise to
Maps
Pathways
“Neural relays”; let our sensory systems build upon and talk to each other
Afferent neurons
Sensory neurons; impulses from sensory stimuli towards the CNS
Efferent neurons
Motor neurons; impulses away from CNS (usually to muscles) for response
E comes after A, so ________ must be the output
Efferent
Presence of a stimulus is encoded by…
An increase or decrease in a neuron’s firing rate
What codes intensity?
Amount of change in neuron’s firing rate
The McGurk Effect
Occurs when the perception of speech is influenced by both auditory and visual information, leading to a perceptual experience where the visual cues impact the interpretation of the auditory speech sounds
Topographic maps
A spatially organized representation of the world
Topographic maps are especially prominent in…
Primary cortical areas, but they exist all over the brain
Secondary cortical areas
Gets information after hitting the primary cortical
Sensation
The registration of physical stimuli
Perception
Is the subjective interpretation of sensations