Sense and perception

Question 1

photoreceptors

Answer 1

light - rods and cones in the retina

Question 2

Hair cells

Answer 2

Sound, rotational/linear acceleration - in organ of corti in ear

Question 3

Nociceptors

Answer 3

pain

Question 4

Thermoreceptors

Answer 4

Temperature

Question 5

Osmoreceptors

Answer 5

Blood osmolarity/salinity - found in hypothalamus (for ADH regulation.

Question 6

Olfactory receptors

Answer 6

Smell

Question 7

Taste receptors

Answer 7

Taste

Question 8

Threshold

Answer 8

The degree to which a person perceives differences.

Weber’s law - perceptible differences are proportional (every person has a baseline, change/initial stimulus)

Question 9

Adaptation

Answer 9

change in threshold due to environmental change

ex: when you get used to hot or cold water

Question 10

Rods

Answer 10

Single rhodopsin pigment - B&W

Not sensitive to detail

Question 11

Cones

Answer 11

Three rhodopsin pigments - Color
Sensitive to detail
Concentrated at the fovea

Question 12

Bipolar cells

Answer 12

Receives direct input from rods and cones, highlight gradients, synapse with ganglion cells

Question 13

Amacrine and horizontal cells

Answer 13

Connect to bipolar cells - define edges and contrast

Question 14

Ganglion cells

Answer 14

Converge together into the optic nerve

Question 15

Visual pathway

Answer 15

(in the right eye) Right visual field - R eye - medial nasal fibers - optic chiasm - LGN - R side of occipital lobe

Question 16

LGN - lateral geniculate nucleus

Answer 16

part of the thalamus

directs light to the visual cortex in the occipital lobe

Question 17

What is the only sense that does not have the thalamus involved in its pathway?

Answer 17

olfaction

Question 18

Sensation vs. perception

Answer 18

sensation is the conversion of physical stimuli into neurological signals. Perception is the processing of sensory information to make sense of it’s significance.

Question 19

Threshold

Answer 19

minimum stimulus that causes a change in signal transduction

Question 20

Weber’s law

Answer 20

the just noticeable difference between stimuli is proportional to the magnitude of the stimuli.

Question 21

Signal detection theory

Answer 21

studies the effects of non-sensory factors, such as experiences, motives, and expectations on perception of a stimuli.

includes studies of response bias - hits (responds yes when there is a signal present), misses, false alarms (responds yes when there is no signal present), and correct negatives.

Question 22

Adaptation

Answer 22

a decrease in response to a stimulus over time.

Question 23

somatosensation

Answer 23

four touch modalities (pressure, vibration, pain, temp)

Question 24

kinesthetic sense

Answer 24

called proprioception: ability to tell where one’s body is in space.

Question 25

bottom-up (data-driven) processing

Answer 25

recognition of objects by parallel processing and feature detection. process is slower, but less prone to mistakes.

Question 26

top-down (conceptually-driven) processing

Answer 26

recognition of an object by memories and expectations with little attention to detail. faster, but more prone to mistakes.

Question 27

Gesalt principles

Answer 27

ways that the brain can infer missing parts of an image when it is incomplete

Question 28

Weber’s law of just noticeable difference

Answer 28

JND = change in weight/original weight (it is a percentage)