The Senses Flashcards
What is syanaesthesia?
When there are links between different sensory modalities e.g. Seeing letters and numbers as coloured or sounds with flavours
What is ramachandran’s hypothesis of synaesthesia?
In early neonatal development, brain sensory regions are linked, then separate off later.. so maybe some links are retained in synaesthetes
What are measuring thresholds?
Boundary between two psychological states
What is an absolute threshold?
Minimal intensity needed to just barley detect a stimulus
What is just noticeable difference? (JND)
Webers law (constant proportion)
What is sensory adaptation?
- over time we adapt to current conditions
- we stop ‘perceiving’ certain things after a while
- useful to prevent us constantly feeling our clothes or noticing the sound of our own breath
What does vision entail?
- visual acuity
- sensing light
- properties of light waves
What are the properties of light waves?
- length (hue)
- amplitude (brightness)
- purity (saturation/richness of colour)
What is the human eye made up of? (8 things)
- cornea
- pupil
- light adaption
- retina
- accommodation
- cones
- rods
- fovea
What is the ventral (below) stream?
Pathway across occipital lobe into lower levels of temporal lobes (shape and identity)
What is the dorsal (above) stream?
Pathway that travels up from occipital lobe to parietal lobes (location and motion)
What is visual form agnosia?
Recognising objects by sight
Why is object recognition important?
Without it, all information would require effortful processing
What is modular view?
Specialised cells that help us detect specific items like houses or trees
What is distributed representation view?
Pattern of activity across cells adds up to a perception/recognition of the object
What are modular view and distributed representation view example of?
Feature detectors
What is perceptual constancy?
Sensitive to change but notice the differences
What is gestalt perceptual grouping rules?
Before object recognition can occur, grouping of images must occur
What does grouping involve?
Visually separating an object from its surroundings
What are 2 theories of object recognition?
Image-based (template/ what if we’ve never seen it before?)
Parts based (brain deconstructs image into parts
What are some monocular cues to depth?
- Linear perspective
- Texture gradient
- Interposition
- Relative height in the image
Explain how we perceive depth and size
Having space between the eyes means that each eye registers a slightly different view of the world. The difference in these views provides the brain with important and direct info about depth.
What is motion parallax based on?
The movement of your head through space and time
What is optic flow?
The movement of visual data that flows past as you move forward
What are the three physical dimensions of sound?
- frequency (perception of pitch)
- amplitude (perception of loudness)
- complexity (perception of timbre)
What is involved in auditory transduction?
- cochlea
- basilar membrane
- hair cells
What is area a1?
A portion of the temporal lobes be that contains the primary auditory cortex
What does place code mean?
The cochlea encodes different frequencies at different locations along the basilar membrane
What does temporal code mean?
The cochlea registers low frequencies via the firing rate of action potentials entering the auditory nerve
What is haptic perception?
Using the hands to explore our environment
What are the different types of pain?
A-delta fibres (fast acting pain)
C fibres (longer lasting pain)
Referred pain
Gate-control theory
What is the vestibular system?
Semicircular canals in ear (body position, movement and balance)
What is the only sense directly connected to the forebrain?
Smell
What are the five different types of taste bud?
- salt
- sour
- bitter
- sweet
- umami (savoury)
What are microvilli?
Taste bud receptors
