 Skin

o Organ of touch or pressure. It also senses heat, cold, and pain, not to

mention itching and ticking.

 Ear

o Organ of hearing. It also contains receptors that account for a sense of

balance.

 Skeletal muscle

o Receptors responsible for a sense of bodily movement.

 All of our senses evolved to help us survive.

 Even pain – it alerts us to illness and injury.

The Riddles of Separate Sensations/Stages of Perception

 Perception

o The process of sensing, understanding, identifying, recognizing, and

reacting to our environments.

 Stage 1 – Sensation

 Stage 2 – Perceptual organization

 Stage 3 – Identification and recognition

o The process by which the brain organizes and interprets sensory

information.

o The process of internal representation, formed in the brain, of an

external stimulus.

o Involves the synthesis of sensory features.

 Sensation

o Stimulation of sensory receptors triggers action potentials that travel

to the brain.
 Sense receptors

 Specialized cells that convert physical energy in the

environment or the body to electrical energy that can be

transmitted as nerve impulses to the brain.

 Dendrites of sensory neurons responsible for smell,

pressure, pain, and temperature.

 Specialized cells for vision, hearing, taste.

 Cells located in the sense organs.

 The receptors for smell, pressure, pain, and

temperature are extensions (dendrites) of sensory

neurons.

 The receptors for vision, hearing, and taste are

specialized cells separated from sensory neurons by

synapses.

 Sense receptors detect an appropriate stimulus – they convert

the energy of the stimulus into electrical impulses that travel

along nerves to the brain.

 The must transmit what they learn to sensory neurons in the

peripheral nervous system.

 The sensory neurons in turn must report to the cells of the

brain.

 The cells of the brain are responsible for analyzing reports,

combining information brought in by different scouts, and

deciding what it all means.

 The sensory nerves all se exactly the same form of

communication, a neural impulse.

 The nervous system encodes the message.

o Johannes Muller in his Doctrine of specific nerve energies first

described one kind of code – anatomical.

 Doctrine of specific nerve energies

o Principle that different sensory modalities exist because signals

received by the sense organs stimulate different nerve pathways

leading to difference areas of the brain.

o If possible, allows for sensory substitution.

o Sensory crossover also occurs in synesthesia where stimulation of one

sense consistently evokes a sensation in another.

o What we know about the world ultimately reduces to what we know

about the state of our own nervous system: We see with the brain, not

the eyes, and hear with the brain, not the ears.

o The pressure produces an impulse that travels up the optic nerve to

the visual area in the right side of the brain, where it is interpreted as

coming from the left side of the visual field.

o By taking advantage of such sensory substitution, researchers hope

one day to enable blind people to see by teaching them to interpret

impulses from other senses that are then routed to the visual areas of

the brain.

 Sensory crossover also occurs in a rare condition called synesthesia – the

stimulation of one sense also consistently evokes a sensation in another.

o These are not merely metaphors to a synesthete: the person actually

experiences the second sensation.

 Synesthesia, however, is anomaly. The senses remain separate.

 Anatomical ending does not completely solve the riddle of why this is so.

 Linking the different skin senses to distinct nerve pathways has proven

difficult.

 The doctrine of specific nerve energies also fail to explain variations of

experience within a particular sense – the sight of pink versus red, the sound

of a piccolo versus the sound of a tube, or the feel of a pinprick versus the feel

of a kiss.

 An additional kind of code is therefore necessary. – This second kind of code

has been called functional.

 Functional codes rely on the fact that sensory receptors and neurons fire, or

are inhibited from firing, only in the presence of specific sorts of stimuli.

o Some cells in the nervous system are firing and some are not.

o Information about which cells are firing, how many cells are firing, the

rate at which cells are firing, and the patterning of each cell’s firing

forms a functional code.

Measuring the Senses

 Psychophysics is concerned with how the physical properties of stimuli are

related to out psychological experience of them.

Absolute Thresholds

 The smallest quantity of physical energy that can be reliably detected by an

observer (50% of the time).

o Vision:

 A single candle flame from almost 50 kilometers on a dark,

clear night.
o Hearing:

 The tick of a watch from more than 7 meters in total quiet.

o Smell:

 1 drop of perfume diffused through a 3-room apartment.

o Touch:

 The wing of a bee on your cheek, dropped from 1 cm.

 Senses are sharp, but only tuned into narrow band of physical energies.

 The word absolute is a bit misleading because people detect borderline

signals on some occasions and miss them on others.

 “Reliable” detection is said to occur when a person can detect a signal 50% of

the time.

 By studying absolute thresholds, psychologists have found that our senses

are very sharp indeed.

 Our senses are tuned in to only a narrow band of physical energies.

Difference Thresholds

 The smallest difference in stimulation that can reliably be detected by an

observer when two stimuli are compared.

 Also called just noticeable difference (JND).

Signal Detection Theory

 Divides the detection of sensory signals into a sensory process and a decision

process.

 Alertness, motives, and expectations can influence how a person responds on

any given occasion.

o If you are in the shower and you are expecting an important phone

call, you might think you heard the telephone ring when it didn’t.
o In laboratory studies, when observers want to impress the

experimenter, they may lean toward a positive response.

 Signal-detection theory

o An observer’s response in a detection task can be divided into a

sensory process, which depends on the intensity of the stimulus, and

decision process, which is influenced by the observer’s response bias.

o Methods are available for separating these two components.

 The researcher can include some trials in which no stimulus is

present and others in which a weak stimulus is present.

 Under these conditions, four kinds of responses are possible:

 Hit: stimulus is present and detected

 Miss: stimulus is present but not detected

 False Alarm: stimulus is not present, but identified as

being present

 Correct Rejection: stimulus is not present, and it is

identified as being absent.

o Response bias

o The information can be fed into a mathematical formula that yields

separate estimates of a person’s response bias and sensory capacity.

o The individual’s true sensitivity to a signal of any particular intensity

can then be predicted.

o The old method of measuring thresholds assumed that a person’s

ability to detect a stimulus depended solely on the stimulus.

o Signal-detection theory assumes that there is no single threshold

because at any given moment a person’s sensitivity to a stimulus

depends on a decision that he or she actively makes.

Sensory Adaptation

 Reduction or disappearance of sensory responsiveness when stimulation is

unchanging or repetitious.

 Useful as it spares us from responding to unimportant information.

 It is the resulting decline in sensory responsiveness.

 We never completely adapt to extremely intense stimuli – a terrible

toothache, the odour of ammonia, that of the desert sun.

 Sensory deprivation

o The absence of normal levels of sensory stimulation.

o Varied responses somewhat dependent on expectations and

interpretations (e.g., hallucinations).

 The volunteers took brief breaks to eat and use the bathroom, but otherwise

they lay in bed, doing nothing.

o Dramatic results

o Within a few hours, many of the men felt edgy.

o Some were so disoriented that they quit the study the first day.

o Those who stayed longer became confused, restless, and grouchy.

o Many reported bizarre visions such as a squadron of squirrels or a

procession of marching eyeglasses.

 Having the kinds of waking dreams.

o The notion that sensory deprivation us unpleasant or even dangerous

turned out to be an oversimplification.

 Experimental procedures probably aroused anxiety.

o Your response to sensory deprivation depends on your expectations

and interpretation of what is happening.

o Reduced sensation can be scary is you are locked in a room for an

indefinite period, but relaxing if you have retreat to that room

voluntarily for a little time out.

Sensing without Perceiving

 When people find them in a state of overload, they often cope by blocking out

unimportant sights and sound focusing only on those they find interesting or

useful.

o Cocktail party phenomenon.

 Selective attention

o Focusing of attention on selected aspects of the environments and

blocking out the others.

o It protects us from being overwhelmed by countless sensory signals

that are constantly impinging on our sense receptors.

o The bad news – selective attention – causes us to miss much that is

going on around us – our conscious awareness of the environment is

much less complete than most people think.

o We may even fail to consciously register objects that were looking

straight at, a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness.

 Failure to consciously perceive something you is looking at

because you are not attending to it.

o Selective attention – mixed blessing.

 It protects us from overload an allow us to focus on what is

important, but it also deprives us of sensory information that

we may need.
 Transduction

o The conversion of one form of physical energy into another.

Vision

 The most frequently studies of all the sense.

 Taking advantage of the sun’s illumination.

 Animals that are active at night tend to rely more heavily on hearing.

What We See

 The stimulus for vision is light.

 Light travels in the form of waves, and the physical characteristics of these

waves affect three psychological dimensions of our visual worlds.

o Hue

 The qualitative experience of the colour of light.

 Corresponds to physical dimension of the light’s wavelength.

 Related to wavelength of light – distance between the crests of

a light wave.

 Shorter waves tend to be seen as violet and blue

 Longer waves – orange and red.

 The sun produces white light – a mixture of all the visible

wavelengths.

 Drops of moisture in the air act as a prism: they separate the

sun’s white light into the colours of the visible spectrum, and

we are treated to a rainbow.

o Brightness

 Refers to the intensity of light.

 Intensity corresponds to the amplitude (maximum height) of

the wave.

 The more light an object reflects, the brighter it appears.

 Brightness is also affected by wavelength: yellows appear

brighter than reds and blues when physical intensities are

actually equal.

o Saturation

 The psychological dimension that captures the purity and

vividness of colour.

 Complexity of light – wideness and narrowness of the range of

wavelengths.

 Light contains only a single wavelength – pure – completely

saturated.

 Extreme white light – completely unsaturated.

 Pure light – extremely rare.

 Usually, we sense a mixture of wavelengths, and we see colours

that are duller and paler than completely saturated ones.

An Eye on the World

 Cornea

o The front part of the eye.

o Protects the eye and bends incoming light rays toward a lens located

behind it.

o The lens of they eye works by subtly changing its shape, becoming

more or less curves to focus light from objects that are close or far

away.

 Iris
o Muscles in the iris control the amount of light that gets into they.

o The part of the eye that gives it colour.

o It surrounds the round opening, pupil.

 Pupil

o The opening in the iris through which light passes.

o When you enter a dim room, the pupil widens, or dilates, to let more

light in.

o Bright sunlight – pupil gets smaller, contracting to allow in les light.

 Lens

o Makes the pupil dilate or constrict to control amount of light.

o Reverses and inverts light pattern as it focuses image on retina.

o Ciliary muscles change the thickness of the lens.

o Linked to nearsightedness and farsightedness.

 Retina

o The visual receptors are located in the back of the eye, retina.

o Special cells that communicate information about light and dark to the

brain are that regulated biological rhythms.

o In developing embryo, the retina forms from tissue that project out

from the brain, not from tissue destined to form other parts of the eye.

o Thus, the retina is actually an extension of the brain.

o Neural tissue lining the back of the eyeballs’ interior, which contains

the receptors for vision.

o At the back of the eye and converts light waves into neural signals

(transduction).

 Light from the top of the visual field stimulated light-sensitive receptor cells
in the bottom part of the retina, and vice versa.

 The brain interprets this upside-down pattern of stimulation as something

that is right side up.

 Process occurs in photoreceptors

o Rods operate best in near darkness (illumination).

o Cones operate best in bright (colour).

 Rods

o About 120 – 125 million receptors in the retina are long and narrow.

o More sensitive to light than cones – enable us to see in dim light and at

night.

o Cannot distinguish different wavelengths of lights so they are not

sensitive to colour.

 Cones

o Another 7 or 8 million receptors are cone shaped.

o Sensitive to specific wavelengths of light and allow us to see colours.

o Need much more light than rods do to respond, so they don’t help us

much when we are trying to find a seat in a darkened movie theatre.

 The centre of the retina, fovea, where vision is sharpest, contains only cones,

clustered densely together.

 Neural impulses leave the retina through the optic nerve (axons of ganglion

cells).

o Spot where the optic nerve exits the retina has no receptors and is

known as the optic disk or blind spot.

o Optic nerve divided into 2 bundles at optic chiasm (creates pathways

of visual system).
 Form the centre to the periphery, the ratio of rods to cones increases, and the

outer edges contain virtually no cones.

 Fovea

o Small region of densely packed cones at the centre of the retina

(highest visual acuity).

 It takes some time for our eyes to adjust fully to dim illumination.

 Dark adaptation

o Gradual improvement of eye’s sensitivity after a shift in illumination

from light to near darkness (rods become more sensitive).

o 7-10 minutes, cone adaptation.

o 10-30 minutes, rod adaptation.

o Chemical changes in rods and cones.

 Rods and cones are connected by synapses to bipolar neurons, which in turn

communicate with neurons called ganglion cells.

 The axons of the ganglion cells converge to form the optic nerve, which

carries information out through the back of the eye and on to the brain.

 Where the optic nerve leaves the eye, at the optic disc, there are no rods or

cones.

 The absence of receptors produces a blind spot in the field of vision.

 Normally, we are unaware of the blind spot because:

o The image projected on the spot is hitting a different; “non-blind” spot

in the other eye.

o Our eyes move so fast that we can pick up the complete image.

o The brain fills in the gap.

Why the Visual System is Not a Camera

 The visual system does not passively record the external world.

 Neurons in the visual system actively build up a picture of the world by

detecting its meaningful features.

 Ganglion cells and neurons in the thalamus of the brain respond to simple

features in the environment, such as spots of light and dark.

 In mammals, special feature detector cells in the visual cortex respond to

more complex features.

o David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel – identifies cortical cells.

o Different neurons were sensitive to different patterns projected on a

screen in front of the animal’s eye.

o Most cells responded maximally to moving or stationary lines that

were oriented in a particular direction and located in a particular part

of the visual field.

 Feature detector cells

o Cells in the visual cortex that is sensitive to specific features of the

environment.

 Evolution has equipped us with an innate face module in the brain.

o Infants show a preference for looking at faces instead of images that

scramble the features of a face, and why a person with brain damage

may continue to recognize faces even after losing the ability to

recognize other objects.

 Wavelength combinations are called additive colour mixtures.

 Complimentary colours

o Wavelengths that appear directly across from each other on the

colour circle.
 After images…

o Demonstrates the complimentary nature of our colour vision

(opponent-process theory).

How We See Colours

Trichromatic Theory

 Suggests there are three types of colour receptors

o Red

o Green

o Blue

 A theory of colour perception that proposes three mechanisms in the visual

system, each sensitive to a certain range of wavelengths. Their interaction is

assumed to produce all the different experiences of hue.

 All other colours are additive or subtractive combinations of the three.

 First level of processing – occurs in the retina of the eye.

 The retina contains three basic types of cones.

 The thousand of colours we see result from the combines activity if these

three types of cones.

 Total colour blindness is usually due to genetic variation that causes cones of

the retina to be absent or nonfunctional.

 The visual world then consists of black, white, and shades of grey.

 Most colour blind people are actually colour deficient.

 Usually, the person is unable to distinguish green and red.

 The world is painted in shades of blue, yellow, brown, and grey.

 Colour deficiency is found in about 8% of white men, 5% of Asian men, and

3% of indigenous men and black men.

 Rare in women.

The Opponent-Process Theory

 Suggests that all colour experiences arise from 3 systems, each of which

include 2 opponent elements:

o Red versus green

o Blue versus yellow

o Black (no colour) versus white (all colours)

 Second stage of colour processing – occurs in ganglion cells in the retina and

in neurons in the thalamus and visual cortex of the brain.

 Cells – opponent process cells – either respond to short wavelengths but are

inhibited from firing by long wavelengths, or vice versa.

 Some opponent-process cells respond in opposite fashion to red and green.

o They fire in response to one and turn off in response to the other.

 Other responds in opposite fashion to blue and yellow.

 A third system responds in opposite fashion to white and black and thus

yields information about brightness.

 The net result is a colour code that is passed along to the higher visual

centres.

 First predicted by Ewald Hering

 Opponent-process cells that are inhibited by a particular colour produce a

burst of firing when the colour is removed, just as they would if the opposing

colour were present.

 Cells that fire in response to a colour stop firing when the colour is removed,

just as they would if the opposing colour were present.

 These facts explain why we are susceptible to seeing negative afterimage

when we stare at a particular hue – why we see, for instance, red after staring

at green.

 Colour Blindness

o The partial or total inability to distinguish colours.

o Often sex-linked hereditary defect (recessive trait on X-chromosome).

 Men = 8%; Women = .5%

 Dichromat and monochromat

 Opponent-process theory

o A theory of colour perception that assumes that the visual system

treats pairs of colours as opposing or antagonistic.

Constructing the Visual World

 For perception, we need to be able to separate objects, but organize what we

see into meaningful units.

 Gestalt Psychology

o “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

o Describe strategies or “principles” used by the visual system to

organize information.

o Allows us to perceive and recognize objects very quickly.

Form Perception

 To make sense of the world, we must know where one thing ends and

another begins.

 The process of dividing up the world occurs rapidly and effortlessly that we

take it completely for granted – until we must make out objects in heavy fog

or words in the rapid-fire conversation of someone speaking in foreign

language.
 Gestalt psychologists – Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka

o First to study how people organize the world visually into meaningful

units and patterns.

o Gestalt is German for form or configuration.

o When we perceive something, properties emerge form the

configuration as a while that is not found in any particular component.

 When you watch a movie – the motion you see is nowhere in

the film, which consists of separate static frames, projected at

24 frames per second.

 People always organize the visual field into figure and ground.

o The figure stands out from the rest of the environment.

o Some things stand out as figure by virtue of their intensity or size. It is

hard to ignore the blinding flash of a camera or a tidal wave

approaching you piece of beach.

o The lower part is a scene tends to be seen as figure, the upper part as

background.

 It is hard to ignore a sudden change of any kind in the environment because

our brains are geared to respond to change and contrast.

 Selective attention gives us some control over what we perceive as figure and

ground, and sometimes it blinds us to things we would otherwise interpret as

figure.

 Perceptual Grouping

o Figure

 Object-like regions of the visual field that are distinguished

from the background.

o Ground

 Background areas of the visual field, against which figures

stand out.

 Other Gestalt principles – strategies used by the visual system to group

sensory building blocks into perceptual units.

o These strategies are present from birth or develop automatically early

in infancy as a result of maturation.

 Here are a few well-known Gestalt principle:

o Proximity

 Things that are near each other tend to be grouped together.

o Closure

 Brain tends to fill in gaps in order to perceive compete forms.

o Similarity

 Things that are alike in some way tend to be perceived as

belonging together.

o Continuity

Perceptual Process

 Law of Perceptual Grouping

o Law of Closure

 We fill in small gaps to experience objects as wholes.

o Law of Common Fate

 We group together objects that are moving in the same

direction.

Depth and Distance Perception

 Visual system relies on two types of cues to judge where an object is, and
how far away from us it is.

o Binocular cues – used for objects that are fairly close to us.

o Monocular cues – used when objects are far away.

 Binocular cues – both eyes

o Retinal disparity

 Discrepancy between corresponding images in the two retinas.

 The slight difference in lateral separation between two objects

as seen by the left eye and the right eye.

o Convergence

 Degree to which eyes turn inward to focus on an object.

o Relative motion parallax

 Relative distance of the object from the viewer determines the

amount and direction of motion in the retinal image.

 Monocular Cues – involve on eye

o Light and shadow

o Interposition

 When an opaque object blocks out a second object.

o Relative size

 Objects of the same size at different distances project images of

different size on the retina.

o Linear perspective

 The illusions that parallel lines converge in the distance.

 Two lines – parallel appear to be coming together.

o Texture gradients

 The density of a texture becomes greater as the surface.

 The perception of distance is also influenced by some factors – emotional

state, a goal you are trying to reach, and the effort necessary to reach that

goal.

Visual Constancies: When seeing is Believing

 Lighting conditions, viewing angles, and the distances of stationary objects

are all continually changing as we move about, yet we rarely confuse these

changes with changes in the objects themselves.

 The ability to perceive objects as stable or unchanging even though the

sensory patterns they produce are constantly shifting is called perceptual

constancy.

o Size constancy

 Perceive the true size of an object despite variations in the size

of its retinal images.

o Shape constancy

 Perceive an object’s shape correctly despite the object slanting

away from you changing the retinal image.

o Lightness/Brightness constancy

 Perceive whiteness, grayness, and blackness as constant across

changing levels of illumination.

 See objects as having a relatively constant brightness even

though the amount of light they reflect changes as the overall

level of illumination changes.

o Location constancy

 We perceive stationary objects as reaming in the same place

even though the retinal image moves about as we move our

eyes, head, and bodies.

o Colour constancy

 See an abject as maintaining its hue despite the fact that

wavelength of light reaching our eyes from the object may

change as the illumination changes – outdoor light is bluer

than indoor light, and objects outdoors therefore reflect more

blue light than those indoors.

Stimuli and Perception

 Ambiguity

o Sometimes single images (stimuli) are ambiguous and open to

multiple interpretations during perceptual and identification

processes.

Visual illusions: When seeing is Misleading

 Perceptual Constancies – to make sense of the world.

 We can be fooled – Perceptual illusion.

 Illusions are valuable because they are systematic errors that provide us with

hints about the perceptual strategies of the mind.

 Illusions

o Perceptual systems deceive you into experiencing a stimulus pattern

in a manner that is demonstrably incorrect.

o Linked to ambiguity in interpretation.

 Muller-Lyer Illusion

o Branches on the lines serve as perspective cues that normally suggest

depth.

o The line on the left is like the near edge of the building. The one on the
right is like the far corner of a room.

o Fooled by rule: When two objects produce the same-sized retinal

image and one is farther away, the farther one is larger.

 Bottom-up processes

o Transformation of concrete physical features of stimuli into abstract

representations.

o Data-driven processing

 Top-down processes

o Individual factors (past experience, knowledge, expectations)

influence the way a perceived object is interpreted and classified.

o Conceptually-driven processing

 The use of context in order to guide perception.

Hearing

What We Hear

 The physics of sound involves vibrational energy that is transmitted through

the air producing waves.

 The stimulus for sound is a wave of pressure created when an object vibrates

(when compressed air is released – pipe organ). The vibration (release of air)

causes molecules in a transmitting substance to move together and apart.

o This movement produces variations in pressure that radiate in all

directions.

o Transmitting substance is usually air.

 Sound wave – are related in a predictable way to psychological aspects of our

auditory experience.

o Loudness
 Amplitude of the sound wave (dB).

 Intensity of wave’s pressure.

 Maximum height and amplitude of the wave.

 More energy a wave contains – higher its peak.

 Measured in decibels (dB) – Alexander Graham Bell –

telephone.

 Average absolute threshold of hearing in human is 0 dB.

 60-decibel sound – is not 50% louder than 40-decibel

sound. It is 100 times louder because the decibel scale is

a logarithmic one.

o Pitch

 Highness or lowness of sound (Hz).

 Frequency of the sound and some intensity

 The number of cycles the wave completed in a given

time (hertz).

 How rapidly the air vibrates – the number of times per

second the wave cycles through a peak and a low point.

 Healthy ear detects 16 Hz (lowest note on a pipe organ).

o Timbre

 Complexity of a sound wave.

 Quality of a sound.

 Pure tone – only one frequency, but in nature, pure tones are

extremely rare.

 What we hear is complex wave consisting of several sub waves

with different frequencies.

 It’s what makes a more played on a flute, which produces

relatively pure tones, sound different from the same notes

played on an oboe, which produces complex sounds.

 When many sound-wave frequencies are present but are not in

harmony – we hear noise.

 When all the frequencies of the sound spectrum occur – white

noise – include all frequencies of the audible sound spectrum.

Sound Localization

 Relative Timing: Sounds arrive at each ear at different times.

 Calculate time difference to locate sound.

 Most effective for low frequencies.

 Relative Intensity

o Head casts a sound shadow producing intensity differences between

ears.

o Effective for higher frequencies only.

 Both cues: greatest at 90 degree, none at 0 or 180 degree.

An Ear On the World

 The soft, funnel-shaped outer ear – collect sound waves.

o Hearing would still be good without it.

 The essential part – inside the head.

 A sound wave passes into the outer ear and through a two-centimetre-long

canal to strike an oval-shaped membrane – eardrum.

o It is sensitive that it can respond to the movement of a single

molecule.

o A sound wave causes it to vibrate with the same frequency and

amplitude as the wave itself.

o This vibration is passed along to three tiny bones in the middle ear –

smallest bones in human body – hammer, anvil, and stirrup.

 Effect on intensifying the force of vibration.

o The inner most bone – stirrup – pushes on a membrane that opens

into the inner ear.

 The actual organ of hearing – organ of Corti – is a chamber inside the cochlea

– a snail-shaped structure within the inner ear.

o A structure in the cochlea containing hair cells that serves as

receptors for hearing.

o Cochlea

 A snail-shaped, fluid-filled organ in the inner ear, containing

the structure where the receptors for hearing are located.

 The organ Corti plays the same role in hearing that the retina plays in vision.

o Contains all the important receptor cells – bristles and are called hair

cells, or cilia.

o Extremely loud noise – damage fragile cells.

o Flop over – if the damage reaches a critical point – hearing loss.

o Damaged hair cells do not regenerate.

 The hair cells of the cochlea are embedded in the rubbery basilar membrane

– stretches across the interior of cochlea.

 When pressure reaches the cochlea – wavelike motions in fluid within the

interior.

 Waves of fluid – push on the basilar membrane – move in wavelike fashion.

 Causes hair cells to initiate a signal that is passed along to the auditory nerve
– which then carries the message to the brain.

Constructing the Auditory World

 Grouping of sounds – auditory scene

 Ongoing sounds are perceived as an auditory stream, which in turn allows the

creation of an auditory scene.

 The Gestalt principle of common fate:

o We perceive stimulus elements as a unit if they move together.

 We can estimate the distance of a sounds source by using loudness as a cue.

 To locate the direction a sound is coming from, we depend in part on the fact

that we have two ears.

Other Senses

Taste: Savoury Sensation

 Papillae

o Knoblike elevations on the tongue, containing the taste buds

(Singular: papilla).

 Taste buds

o Nests of taste-receptor cells.

o Photograph of tongue surface (top), magnified 75 times.

o 10,000 taste buds line the tongue and mouth.

 Taste receptors are down inside the “bud.”

o Children have more taste buds than adults.

 The actual receptor cells are inside the buds – 15 to 50 to a bud.

o Fifth – umami – Japanese for delicious – monosodium glutamate MSG

– protein-rich foods – meat, shellfish, and seaweed.

 Different people have different tastes based on:

o Genetics

o Culture

o Learning

o Food attractiveness

Smell: The Sense of Scents

 Sense of smell – olfaction.

o Actually good – the human nose can detect aromas that the most

sophisticated machines fail to detect.

 The receptors for smell are specialized neurons embedded in a tiny patch of

mucous membrane in the upper part of the nasal passage, just beneath the

eyes.

 When you inhale, you pull these molecules into the nasal cavity.

 Signals from the receptors are carried to the brain’s olfactory bulb by the

olfactory nerve, which is made up of the receptors’ axons.

 From the olfactory bulb, they travel to a higher region of the brain.

 Odours

o Psychological effects – because olfactory centres in the brain are linked

to areas that process memories and emotions, specific smells often

evoke vivid, emotionally coloured memories.

o Influence people’s everyday behaviour, which is why shopping malls

and hotels often install aroma diffusers in hopes of putting you in a

good mood.

Senses of the Skin

 Protecting our innards

 Two square metres

 Gives us sense of ourselves as distinct from the environment.

 Basic skin senses

o Touch or pressure

o Warmth

o Cold

o Pain

 Itch

 Tickle

 Painful burning

The Mystery of Pain

 Not only a skin sense but also an internal sense.

 When the stimulus producing is removed, the sensation may continue –

sometimes for years.

 Chronic pain disrupts lives, puts stress on the body, and causes depression

and despair.

Pain Mechanisms

 Network of pain receptors covers body like a fine mesh.

 Some receptors respond only to temperature, while others respond to

chemical or mechanical stimuli.

The Gate-Control Theory of Pain

 Experience of pain depends (in part) on whether the pain impulse gets past

neurological “gate” in the spinal cord and this reaches the brain.

 Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall

 Pain impulses must get past after in the spinal cord.

 The gate is not an actual structure, but rather a pattern of neural activity that

either blocks pain messages coming from the skin, muscles, and internal

organs, or lets those signals through.

 Normally, the gate is kept shut, either by impulses coming into the spinal

cord from large fibres that respond to pressure and other kinds of

stimulation, or by signals coming down from the brain itself.

 Body tissue is injured – the large fibres are damaged and smaller fibres open

the gate, allowing pain messages to reach the brain unchecked.

 It also emphasizes role of the brain in controlling the gate, it correctly

predicts that thought and feelings can influence our reactions to pain.

 Correctly predicts that mild pressure, or other kinds of stimulation, can

interfere with severe or protracted pain by closing the spinal gate – rib a

banged elbow or apply ice packs, eat, or stimulating ointments to injuries, we

are applying this principle.

Updating the Gate-Control Theory

 Neuromatrix Theory of Pain

o Theory that the matrix of neurons in the brain is capable of generating

pain (and other sensations) in the absence of signals from sensory

nerves.

 Does not fully explain the many instances of severe, chronic pain that occur

without any sign of injury or disease whatsoever.

 Phantom Pain

o A person continues to feel pain that seemingly comes from an

amputated limb or from an organ that has been surgically removed.

 Ronal Melzack
o Revised the gate-control theory.

o The brain not only responds to incoming signals from sensory nerve

but also is also capable of generating pain (and other sensations)

entirely on its own.

o An extensive matrix (network) of neurons in the brain gives us a

sense of our own bodies.

o Abnormal patterns can occur not only because of input from

peripheral nerves, but also as a result of memories, emotions,

expectations, or signals from various brain centres.

o In the case of phantom pain, the abnormal patterns may arise because

of a lack of sensory stimulation or because of the person’s efforts to

move a nonexistent limb.

 Different types of pain involve different chemical changes and different

changes in nerve-cell activity at the site of the injury or disease, as well as in

the spinal cord and brain.

 These changes may suppress the pain or may amplify it by making neurons

hyper excitable.

 Chronic, pathological pain involves glia, the cells that support nerve cells.

 Challenges to the immune system during viral and bacterial infections, and

substances released by neurons along the pain pathway after an injury,

activate glial cells in the spinal cord.

 The glia then release inflammatory substances that may worsen the pain and

keep it going.

 These chemicals can spread to the spinal cord areas far from the site where

they were released, which may help explain why injured people sometimes
report pain in body areas that were not hurt.

 A leading explanation of phantom pain is that the brain has reorganized

itself: The area in the sensory cortex that formerly corresponded to the

missing body part has been invaded by neurons from another area, often one

corresponding to the face.

o Higher brain centers then interpret messages from those neurons as

coming from the nonexistent body part.

The Environment Within

 Vestibular senses

o How one’s body is oriented in the world with respect to gravity.

 Kinesthetic senses

o Bodily position and movement of the body parts relative to each

other.

 Kinesthesis

o Tells us where our body parts are located and lets us know when they

move.

o This information is provided by pain and pressure receptors located

in the muscles, joints, and tendons.

o Without it – could not touch your finger to your nose with your eyes

shut.

 Trouble with any voluntary movement.

 Equilibrium

o Sense of balance

o Gives us information about our bodies as a whole.

o Lets us know whether we are standing upright or on our heads and

tells us when we are falling or rotating.

o Relies primarily on the semicircular canals in the inner ear.

 Sense organs in the inner ear that contribute to equilibrium by

responding to rotation of the head.

 These thin tubes are filled with fluid that moves and presses on

hair like receptors whenever the head rotates.

 The receptors initiate messages that travel through a part of

the auditory nerve that is not involved in hearing.

 Kinesthesis and equilibrium work together to give us a sense of our own

physical reality.

Perceptual Powers: Origins and Influences

Inborn Abilities

 Most basic sensory abilities, and many perceptual skills, are inborn, or

develop very early.

 Infants born with basic sensory abilities, which rapidly develop.

 Depth perception & visual cliff experiments.

 Testing an infant’s perception of depth requires considerable ingenuity.

 Placing infants on a device called visual cliff

o The cliff is a pane of glass covering a shallow surface and a deep one.

o Both surfaces are covered by a check board pattern.

o The infant is placed on a board in the middle, and the child’s mother

tried to lure the baby across either the shallow side or the deep side.

o Babies only six months of age will crawl across the shallow side but

will refuse to crawl out over the cliff.

o Their hesitation shows that hey have depth perception.

Critical Periods

 Crucial windows of time during which a person must have certain

experiences or perception will be impaired.

 Classic studies with kittens in controlled environments (visual perception).

Psychological and Cultural Influences

 Needs: more likely to perceive something when we need or have an interest

in it.

 Beliefs: what we believe can affect what we perceive.

 Emotions: can influence interpretations of sensory information (especially

pain & fear).

 Expectations: previous experiences influence what we perceive (e.g.,

perceptual set).

Culture and Perception

 Different cultures provide different environments and levels of practice.

 Muller-Lyer illusion not effective in “less-carpentered” cultures.

 Western cultures focus more on figure than ground; East Asian cultures focus

more on context.

Puzzles of Perception

 Perceiving without awareness – subliminal perception.

o Visual stimuli can affect behaviour even when you are unaware that

you saw it (priming).

o Nonconscious processes influence perception, memory, thinking, and

decision-making.

o Subliminal persuasion attempts (e.g., theatre study) often don’t

consider person’s motivation (placebo effects).

 Priming

o A method used to measure unconscious cognitive processes, in which

a person is exposed to information and is later tested to see whether

the information affects behaviour or performance on another task or

in another situation.

 Extrasensory perception (ESP)

o Claims that some can send & receive messages about the world

without relying on the usual sensory channels (limited empirical

support).

 Parapsychology

o Study of purp