Sensation And Perception Final Flashcards
Why is touch important?
- Survival: sensing danger (temperature), feedback from environment
- Social interactions: shaking hands, placing hands on back
Somatic senses
- Sensing the physical state of the body based on a variety of info
- 5 of them
Tactile sensation (somatic sense)
- Position and structure of objects making contact with body surface
Nociception (somatic sense)
- Sensing noxious stimuli applied to body
2. Ex. Pain
Temperature (somatic sense)
- Sensing stimuli that are warmer or colder than body surface
Proprioception (somatic sense)
- The sense of the position of the limbs
Kinesthesis (somatic sense)
- The sense of movement of the limbs and body
Layers of the skin
- Epidermis: outer layer (including a layer of dead skin cells) hairy and glabrous (hairless)
- Dermis: inner layer of skin
- Skin considered a single (and largest) organ
Mechanoreceptors
- Sensory receptors in the skin that respond to touch (pressure)
- Convert mechanical energy into electrochemical energy
- 4 kinds
Merkle receptors
- fires to continuous pressure
- fine detail perception
- Location: epidermis
Meissner corpuscle
- Location: epidermis
- On/off stimulation
- Tapping, grabbing perception
Ruffin cylinder
- Fires to continuous pressure
- Stretching perception
- Location: dermis
Pacinian corpuscle
- On/off stimulation
- Vibration perception
- Location: dermis
Thermoreceptors
- Sensory receptors that respond to temperature
2. Warm fiber and cold fibers
Warm fiber
- Increases its response rate as temp is increased
- Continues to fire as long as higher temp continues
- Decreases its firing rate when the temperature is decreased
- Does not respond to mechanical stimulation
Cold fiber
- Increase firing rate when temp decreased
2. Continue to fire at low temperatures
Cortical processing of touch
- Tactile information is represented in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and the secondary somatosensory cortex (S2)
- Location information is maintained in a spatial map
- S1 and S2 is in the parietal lobe
Spatial map in S1
- Homunculus: Latin for little man
2. Larger = higher tactile acuity, greater cortical representation
S1 neurons and receptive fields (somatosensory-style)
- Area on the skin that an S1 neuron is particularly sensitive to
- Firing rate increases when area is stimulated
- Center-surround organization
How receptive fields map onto tactile acuity
- Tactile acuity: perceiving fine details via your sense of touch
- Large RF = low resolution, less detail
- Small RF = high resolution, more detail
- Merkel cells have smallest RF = can perceive most detail
How RF size varies with location on skin
- Two-point threshold: the distance at which 2 pressure points can be distinguished
- Millimeters for fingers, centimeters for back because RF size is smaller on fingers than on back
Cortical plasticity in S1
- S1 is plastic: changes with experience
- Training/ stimulation of fingers alters the cortical representation
- In humans: pianists have larger cortical area devoted to their fingers than normal individuals
Perceiving objects via sense of touch
- Haptic exploration: exploring an object via your sense of touch
- Research shows that people can identify objects haptically in 1-2 seconds
Physiology of tactile object perception
- Features of an object are processed first
- Occurs in S1 > S1 neurons are selective > respond to particular orientations/directions
- Features then combined to make a whole object
- Occurs in S2 and higher areas > some neurons selective to specific objects
S1 and attention
- Some neurons in S1 only respond when monkey is attending to the tactile stimulus
Pain perception
- Pain is necessary: need to know whether the body is hurt or in danger of being hurt
Experience of pain
- Nociceptors: sensory receptors that respond to potentially harmful stimuli (temperature, pressure, chemical)
- These receptors send pain info to brain stem and cortex
Types of physical pain
- Nociceptive pain: nociceptor activation, results from extreme heat/cold, chemicals, extreme pressure
- Inflammatory pain: damage to tissues, joints
- Neuropathic pain: carpal tunnel, damage to nervous system from spinal cord injury or stroke, phantom limb pain
Brain areas involved in pain perception
- Pain is multimodal
- Somatosensory cortex S1 (parietal lobe)
- Thalamus
- Temporal lobe
- Amygdala
- Hypothalamus
- Prefrontal cortex
- Anterior cingulate cortex
Gate control theory of pain (modulating pain)
- Spinal cord contains neurological gate that blocks pain signals or allows them to continue to the cortex
- Factors that open/ close the gate: nociceptor activity, activity in other receptors, input from the brain
Emotional factors that open/close gate (gate control theory)
- Open gate: anxiety, worry, panic, depression
- Close gate: happiness, relaxation, excitement,
- endorphins close gate: massage, nutrition, injections, exercise, positive attitude, pacing activities, distractions from pain
Cognitive factors in modulating pain: anticipation
- Anticipation
- Pain tolerance study;
- subjects had to put hand in ice water, FMRI measured
- Results: anticipating pain produced same brain activation as experiencing the pain
Cognitive factors in modulating pain: expectations
- Expectation
2. If patient told a procedure won’t hurt, they will experience less pain (placebo effect)
Cognitive factors modulating pain: attention
- Attention
- Experience of pain might not set in until you attend to the injury
- Attending away from the injury: can withstand pain longer
- ex. Show men pictures of attractive females, they can keep their hand in ice water for longer
Hypnosis
- Hypnosis induced pain is similar to physical pain
2. Hypnosis can also reduce pain perception
Emotional and social pain
- Emotional (break ups)
- Social (exclusion from a group)
- Empathic pain (watching someone else hurt, actually activates pain network)