Pain Gating of pain in the spinal cord
 Pain is an overstimulation of any system
 Nociceptor- receptors for pain
 Delta fibres: myelinated neurones. Fast, sharp
pain Remember- delta airlines, planes are fast so
fast pain
 C fibres: slow dull pain from myelinated sheafs,
remember- carcinogens cause a slow death, slow
pain
 The same stimulus can activate both systems
 Pain can be impacted by:
o Person’s mental state
o Occur in the absence of stimulation
(phantom limb pain)
o Attention
Proprioception
 Where your body is in space- signals from
muscles
 Also can use other modalities such as vestibular
system, tactile receptors etc
 Kinesthesis
 Influences degree to which painful information reaches
the brain
 Pain can be reduced by:
o Non painful tactile stimulation
o Top-down input
 ‘Gate’ let’s through signals or blocks them, decides what
pain we should pay attention too
Phantom limbs
 After a limb is amputated patient may feel a phantom
limb in its place, there is no external stimulus, but the
patient still feels the limb
 Many patients feel phantom arms/hands when touched
on the face
 New work challenges this remapping view showing the
missing hand is still represented in the brain
The man who lost his body
 IW lost most proprioception, kinesthesis, and touch from
a viral infection when he was 19
 He learnt over 3yrs to compensate using only visual
information, so is unable to move if it is dark
 Lost fast myelinated fibres but retained the slow c fibres
 Types of tactile receptors
 Merkel’s disc- fine details
ra
 Meissner corpuscle- flutter
Lecture 12- Touch and pain  Ruffini organ- stretching
Skin  Pacinian corpuscle- vibration, fine texture
 Largest sense organ in the body- it has an area of  Many receptors detect many different types of
1.8m2 and a weight of 5kg information, a single stimulus can detect many different
 Glabrous skin is on palms of hands and feet receptor systems
 Hairy skin is everywhere else Receptive Fields
 Stimulus contacts the skin -> receptor in skin fires ->  The area of skin that a particular cell receives
signal travels to brain via the spinal cord-> signal information about
reaches somatosensory cortex  Pacinian corpuscles have larger receptor fields than
 Skin sensations Meissner’s corpuscles
o Touch- mechanical  2-point threshold- the smallest separation of 2 separate
o Pain but adjacent points of stimulation on the skin that just
o Body sense (proprioception) produces 2 distinct impressions of touch
o Temperature  Fingertip: 2mm
Active vs passive touch  Arm: 3.5cm
 Active touch is the active exploration of the  The fingertips have more receptive fields than the arm,
environment so 2 receptors fields are stimulated, but only one is on
o More parts of the body contact the object the arm
o You can search for the most diagnostic parts  Fingertips have the most receptors and acuity changes
of the object to feel with experience
o Kinesthetics senses are engaged
What and where processing
 Passive touch is where the body is stationary
 Double dissociations
 Perceiving texture
o Tactile agnosia: cannot identify objects by
o Spatial cues- bumps and grooves when
touch, no problems with spatial processing
finger is stationary or moving
o Tactile extinction- cannot detect a stimulus if
o Temporal cues- only when move finger
not in the presence of another stimulus in
across surface
certain parts of the body
 Pacinian corpuscles- adaptations to
 Brain activity
high frequencies impairs
o Healthy p’s felt objects whilst in a fmri scanner,
performance
 Can perceive texture via a tool e.g. a in what object was condition there was activity

pen in the primary and secondary somatosensory

Top-down influences on touch cortex. In the where the object was condition
 Must update as the body moves there was activity in the superior parietal areas

 Emotional effect: the same sensation may be

pleasurable or unpleasant depending on the context
Can’t tickle self as
 Expectation and surprise you can predict your
Aristotle’s illusion own action, same
 Cross fingers and close eyes, stroke something should sense 2 objects touch rated as more
when there is only one ticklish when
Cutaneous rabbits produced by
 Stimulus- widely separated taps experimenter rather
 Perception- evenly spaced jumps than self
 Activity in primary somatosensory cortex as if p2 had been stimulated
 Lecture 11- Chemical senses and multisensory integration
 Taste (gustation) and smell (olfaction)
are both chemosenses so
chemicals
 Survival value- preventing the ingestion
of toxins to avoid danger
 Social effects of smell- pheromones
Eating
 Eating is multisensory
 Flavour is influenced by taste and
olfaction as well as: texture,
(chillies), sound (crunchiness) and vision
 Tongue is well-represented in
somatosensory cortex
 Chillies act on pain receptors on the
tongue, can be partly supressed by
other flavours such as sweet and sour
liquids, bitter foods are not effective and
salty is fine but not great
 Food tastes crunchier and fresher when
the sound of eating it is amplified or the
frequencies are increases
 Foods rated as less sweet and salty in
the presence of background noise
 Oenology (wine testing) students fooled
by white wine with red dye
 Tastiness rating for food increased for
art inspired dishes
Multisensory integration
 Can allow detection of weak stimulus in
another modality
 Can make sense of an ambiguous
stimulus in another modality
 Can alter the quality of a stimulus in
another modality
 Ventriloquism is an example, as visual
info affects where we perceive the
sound coming from
Taste
detect  Core tastes: Sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (savoury)
 Each taste bud cell (~9k-10k) responds to a receptor within each
 Sweet: Sugars and artificial sweeteners
 Source: all acids
 Bitter: No unique chemical, examples are quinine, caffeine, phenol,
peptide
 Salty: Table salts
 Umami: Mono sodium glutamate, inosine 5-monophosphate,
guanosine 5-monophosphate
 Super tasters have more papillae and taste buds and can detect
tasteless substances such as PROP
 Starch has been proposed as the sixth taste, may be important for
detections as a form of slow-release energy
Smell
 Olfaction can discriminate up to 10,000 types of molecule- recent
pain
research has indicated that we can discriminate 1trillion molecules
 Limited by what our memory can indicate
the
 No satisfactory classification of odours
 Smell enters through 2 routes
o Orthonasal- Inhalation
o Retronasal- Chewing and swallowing
 There are 350 different types of olfactory receptors, which are able
to discriminate a large number of different smells
 Receptors of similar project to the same glomerulus
 Top- down effects on smell
o Sniffing
o Smells giving a mood
o Automatic attention (pay attention if something smells bad)
o Effects of labelling: Same odour smells worse if told it is
body odour compared to cheese
o Effect of learning: Expert wine tasters can identify wine
odours
 There is a close connection between smell and memory
o Proust effect: vivid memories are bought back by particular
smells, there is close linkage between smell and limbic
system in the brain
Multisensory receptive fields
 Single neurone responds to more than one modality
 Orbitofrontal cortex responses to both taste and smell
 Posterior parietal cortex responds to touch, vision, sound
 McGurk Effect
 Watching lips moving to make a ‘ga-ga’ sound
but hear ‘ba-ba’, but you perceive ‘da-da’
visual information affects the sound that you
hear
Kinaesthesia
 Travelling at 70mph feels slow after 10mins,
nervous system turns down the gain feeling
 Increasing speed awareness
o Multisensory approach, painted or
raised lines to increase awareness of
speed from vision and sound, this
makes the roundabout feel closer
Rubber Hand Illusion
 Stroke both the persons hand and a rubber hand, has to be
at the exact same time
 The person feels ownership of the rubber hand
Synaesthesia
 Stimulation of a particular type which leads to another
perceptual experience
 E.g. hearing music but seeing coloured letters or tasting
shapes
 1 in 200 people have this
 Training
o 9 weeks participants pass tests of synaesthesia
o P’s vividly describe experiences
o Increased IQ
 Ecological Environment
Ouchi Illusion
 Combine features in the
Lecture 10 part 2 environment: Movement,

Ouchi Illusion knowledge of familiar objects,

 Middle section appears separate from multi sensory integration

the rest of the figure

 Caused by eye movements, eyes
always slightly moving even when
fixated, the brain normally cancels
this out
 In the ouchi illusion the pattern is
such that compensation is not
necessary effect on different
orientations, the brain interprets this
as moving
 Peripheral drift: Even when eyes
fixated, eyes make very small random
movements, these are compensated
for at the fovea but not at the

Lecture 10- Visual illusions
Optical Illusions
 Suggest that the eye is not a passive camera
but perception is an active process in the
brain
 Illusions occur when what we see does not
correspond to what is physically present in the
world
Muller-Lyer explanation
Muller-Lyer Ebbinghaus Illusion
Wundt Illusion
Kanizsa
Necker Cube Triangle
Ames Room
Frictions cont.
 Ames room: Room appears cubic when
viewed through one eye (true shape is
trapezoidal), objects and people appear to
grow/shrink as they travel from one corner of
the room to the other. Causes 2 people of
equal sizes appear very different
o Person on left has a smaller visual
angle than the girl on the right, the
perception is that both girls are the
same distance away, so the person
with the larger visual angle appears
taller
 Forced perspective: ‘Holding’ the Eiffel tower
 Moon illusion: When the moon is on the
horizon it appears much larger than when it is
directly overhead. Apparent distance theory:
see sky as a flattened dome, it appears closer
over our heads, the horizon moon looks larger
as it looks further away
Classification of visual illusions
 Distortions
o Muller-Lyer: Blue line appears longer than the red
line but they are the same length
o 12 different theories to explain this
o Gregory (1966) explained on basis of misapplied
size constancy. ‘Fins’ on blue make it look like it was
in the corner of the room, ‘fins’ of the left make it
look on the outside corner of the room. So the
scaling makes the blue line look longer
o However, illusion is still found with 3D displays when
obvious that spaces between ‘fins’ are not different
depths
o Not cross-cultural: people who live in a natural more
countryside environment are less prone to the
illusion
o Ponzo Illusion: Two lines converging give a
vanishing point, give the illusion that line nearer
vanishing point is further away and appears larger
o When lines converge at the bottom of the image
there is less of the illusion, the depth is diminished
o Poggendorff: Straight line passes through behind a
rectangle, when the angle between the line and the
box increases, the misperception of lining up the two
lines decreases, illusion that the line passes behind
the rectangle
o Actual angle dilation: Our brains make small angles
appear larger than they actually are
o Herring: 2 straight lines appear bowed out
o Ebbinghaus/titchner illusion
 Ambiguous figures
o Necker cube: Dot in the corner of the square could
be near or the far corner
o Looking at the 2D drawing, your brain visualises it as
a 3D cube, so you do not know which face is the
front
 Paradoxical figures
o Picturing 2D images as 3D
 Frictions
o Kanizsa Triangle: Seeing a triangle when there isn’t
one
o Subjective contours, common to see near objects
blocking the view of the more distant ones, this is
why people see shapes which block the view of the
circles. A near object looks brighter than a more
distant one of the same colour, brain interprets the
illusory triangles as being closer than the circles, you
 Lecture 9- sound and the ear
Characteristic of the sound wave Perceptual phenomenon
Frequency (Hertz) Pitch
-High frequency- shorter wavelength
-Typical
human
hearing
range-
20-
20,000
Hz

Amplitude Loudness
-High amplitude- Loud
-Small amplitude- quiet
Complexity Timbre (quality of sound)
Fourier Analysis
 Fundamental frequency: wavelength of the
longest component, this determines the
pitch of the sound
 Harmonics: determines the timbre and the
sound quality

Vestibular System
 Controls balance
 Vestibular- ocular reflex, brain detects that
Fluid in the
you move your head so tells your eyes to semi-circular
focus canal

Middle and inner ear

 Ossicles are bones in The endolymph
moves the capula
the middle ear when
they move it causes  Different frequencies cause
the eardrum to move, different parts of the basilar
they are attached to membrane to vibrate.
the oval window  Lower frequency creates
 Basilar membrane longer waves
forms the cochlea,  Cochlear: Hair cells in the corti
Hearing own voice sounds different as the
the oval window detect vibrations in the basilar
soundwaves come from the vibration of the skull
vibrates which membrane, hair cells change
rather than from inside the ear
produces waves in firing rate when they are bent
the basilar membrane
 Cochlear Auditory transduction
 Tonotopic  Air pressure changes are kinetic
o Hair cells respond preferentially to a  Vibration of eardrum->middle ear->oval window is
particular frequency, how strong a sound of a mechanical
particular frequency is needed to respond  Cochlear fluid flows are kinetic
o Tonotopic organisation is maintained as far  Hair cells bending are mechanical
as primary auditory cortex in the temporal  Auditory nerve fires is neural
lobe
Space perception
o Neurones next to one another respond to
 Different to perception of space in vision
Pitch and loudness
 Like depth perception in vision, it is indirect
 Pitch depends on frequency
 Monaural (one ear)
 Loudness depends on amplitude, but they are not
o Loudness nearby sounds louder
independent
o Doppler effect: freq. lost over longer
 More intense low freq. sounds are perceiving as
distances
lower pitch
 Binaural (both ears)
 Perception of loudness is affected by frequency
o Needed to perceive direction
 Low freq. sounds need to be more intense to be
o Interaural intensity differences, sound to the
perceived as equally loud
left ear must travel
Auditory grouping/streaming o Interaural time differences- up 0.07 seconds
 Like ground separation in vision o Head movements- can perceive vertical
 Grouped into streams by proximity location of sound source
o Space Auditory Illusion
o Time  Shepard Tones
o Frequency o Appearance of ascending scale when there
isn’t, uses a mixture of tones with ambiguous
pitches, we interpret them as always being a
higher pitch
 Sine wave speech
o Hearing speech with no acoustic cues, will
hear the words when you know what they
are
 Functions of motion
 Movement of object provides information about
Lecture 8- Motion perception
object’s 3D shape
Evolutionary importance
 Movement allows use to segregate figure from ground
 Evolved very early as movement signifies life
and perceptual organisation
 Predators that can detect prey movement are more  Movement breaks camouflage
likely to detect it
 Allows us to actively interact with the environment
 Prey that can detect predators more likely to survive
 Informs of your headings and time to collision
 Some animals have poor depth, shape, and colour
 Movement attracts our attention
perception but no animals lack the ability to perceive
movement How to make a spot of light move
 Real movement: Light physically moves
Motion and form perception
o Perceive movement when the eyes are
 Random dot kinematograms:
stationary, so the image moves across the
 Correspondence problem suggest that motion
retina
detection is direct
o It stimulates a series of receptors
o Neurones in a visual system that respond
best to when a stimulus moves in a particular
direction
o Threshold for perceiving movement:
Depends on objects and its surroundings, for
3cm of travel viewed from 30cm, threshold for
detection would be 1/6th to 1/3rd of a degree of
visual angle per second
o Perception of velocity: Affected by
surroundings and the size of the moving
object
 Apparent movement
 Induced movement
 Autokinetic movement
 Movement aftereffects
 Detecting motion
o Detection of movement in a specified direction
and speed
o When something moves in the proper
direction, 2 signals meet at the same time to
produce a strong response
o When something moves in the wrong
direction, there is no response
o When something is at the wrong speed there
is no response
o Change in the order of delay to get the other
direction, change the spacing of the detectors
to detect different speeds
o Aperture problem: all outputs of detectors
must be integrated at some stage in the
medial temporal area, as the movement of
 What is colour?
 Visible light forms a narrow band of frequencies
Lecture 7- Colour perception
in the electromagnetic spectrum
What is colour good for?  Within this range, different frequencies have
 Only a few mammals see colours in the same way as us different hues ranging from red (long
(trichromatic- 3 colours) wavelength) to violet (short wavelength)
o Catarrhine and platyrrhine monkeys  Different objects absorbed and reflected
 Some birds and tropical fish are tetrachromatic (4 colours) different wavelengths of light- which gives them
 Pigeons are pentachromats (5 colours) colour

 Scene segmentation: Variations in colour signify object

boundaries
 Camouflage
 Perceptual organisation: Visual system uses colour to
group elements in a scene
 Evolutionary factors: food identification e.g., ripe fruit,
correct leaves, harmless/harmful berries,
poisonous/venomous animals Light and colour
 Properties of light
Hue, intensity, and saturation
o Wavelength
 Colour is more complicated than just wavelength
o Intensity
judgement, the wavelength just determines what hue of
o Spectral purity (amount of colours
light is seen
present)
 Perceived colour is determined by:
 Psychological attribute
o Intensity of reflected light
o Hue
o Saturation of the colour
o Brightness
Trichromatic theory
o Saturation
 3 receptor types and their combined responses account
Tapetum lucidum
for all colours
 Reflective part in the eye, it serves to allow
 Blue-sensitive cones are maximally responsive to short
retinal cells a second opportunity for photon-
wavelengths (S-cones)
photoreceptor stimulation
 Green-sensitive cones are maximally responsive to
 Enhances visual sensitivity at low light levels
medium wavelengths (M-cones)
 Red-sensitive cones maximally responsive to long Retina: Cone distribution
wavelength (L-cones)  Concentration of cones in the fovea
 But the colours are more blue, 2 shades of green so just  Eye movements causes the image of interest to
refer to the cones as S,M,L fall onto the fovea
 Support for this theory:  Fovea has a high density of receptors- high
o 3 primary colours combine to form all possible acuity
colours  No rods in the centre of the fovea
o 3 forms of dichromatism (colour blindness(
o Mixture of green and red produces same
perception as monochromatic yellow light
o Afterimages
 Opponent process theory
 When p’s asked to pick out colours that were not a mix
they:
o Pick red, green, blue but also yellow (so more than
3 colour receptors)
o Cones and fatigue not understood so unclear on
how trichromacy actually causes afterimages
 Theory
o One of the colour pairs suppresses the other
colour
o Red- green receptor
o Blue-yellow receptor
o Black-white receptor
 Support
o Non-existence of certain colours
o Colour confusions in colour blindness
o Complementary afterimages
But both theories may be correct, trichromacy for the 3 cones,
opponent processes at the LGN and cortical cells
Colour blindness
 First described in 1794 by John Dalton who had
it himself- but was not diagnosed until 200 years
later, his eye is used for research
 Anopias: Insensitive to L,M,S wavelengths of
light- missing a type of cone
o Protanopia: L pigment cone is missing.
1.3% in males, 0.02% in females
o Deuteranopia: M cone missing. 1.2% in
males, 0.01% in females
o Tritanopia: S cone missing. 0.001% in
males, 0.003% in females
 Anomalies: Misalignment of L or M in
trichromats
o Protoanomaly: L cone deficiency. E.g.,
need more ‘red’ in ‘red-green’ to match
yellow. 1.3% in males, 0.02% in females
o Deuteranomaly: M cone deficiency.
E.g., need more ‘green’ in ‘red-green’
mixture to match yellow. 5% in males,
0.35% in females
 Colour blind people just have colour confusions
 Cortical colour blindness: just see black and
white
 Colour blindness supports both theories
o Anopia points to 3 cone types
o Opponent process theory supports that
those who have trouble with red also
have trouble with red
 Human tetrachromats
o Rare disorder (mainly in females) have
4 pigment types so can detect other
variations in hues that others cannot
o Some birds and butterflies have five
receptors
 Lecture 6- Depth Perception
Cues to Depth perception
Oculomotor Cues
 Cues that depend on our ability to
sense the position of our eyes and
tension in our eye muscles
 Feelings you experience:
convergence- your eye muscles
cause your eyes to look inwards.
Accommodation- as the lens
bulges to focus on a near object,
the ciliary muscles allow the lens
to become more rounded
Movement-produced cues
 Motion parallax: As an observer
moves relative to a 3D scene,
nearby objects appear to move
rapidly whereas far objects move
more slowly
 Relative direction and amount of
motion
 Deletion: As one object moves in
front of another, the front object
covers more of the back object
 Accretion: As one object moves
away from another, the front object
covers less of the back object
Pictorial Cues/monocular cues
 Cues that can be depicted in a still picture
 Only require one eye
 Overlap/interposition/occlusion: One object obscures the part of
another, can still interpret the full image
 Relative size: The retinal size of objects gets smaller as they get
further away.
 Size constancy: An object can look the same size at different distances
but retinal image size changes with distance. Increased distance:
decreased retinal image, decreased distance: increased retinal image
 Emmert’s Law: Objects that generate retinal images of the same size
will differ in physical size if they appear to be located at different
distances, the perceived size of an object increases as its perceived
distance from the observer increases
 Relative height: As objects get further away, they get nearer the
horizon, if the objects are below eye heigh level, the highest object is
furthest away. If the object is above eye height level, then the lowest
object is further away
 Atmospheric perspective: Distant objects appear less sharp because
there are more air and particles to look through
 Familiar size: Existing knowledge of objects can impact size perception
 Linear perspective: Lines that are parallel in a scene converge as they
get further away
 Shading/shadows: Shadows within objects- attached shadows,
assume lighting is from above. Detached shadows make objects
appear higher/lower. Texture gradient: texture becomes smaller/finer
as distance increases

Binocular Disparity
 AKA binocular stereopsis, so depends on both eyes and that each eye perceives the world slightly differently
 There are corresponding retinal points, these would be identical if one retina superimposed the other. When you fixate
on an object it will stimulate corresponding points in the two eyes. Further away objects
 Non-corresponding retinal points, regions on the 2 retina that would not overlap is superimposed, this created disparity.
Closer objects
 The amount of disparity tells us how far away objects are from each other
 The cue for depth diminishes with distance of the objects and the eyes, it is an adaptation from childhood and is
determined by the distance of two eyes. Hyperstereo can give increased depth
 To create stereoscopic depth: present the same image to both eyes, but shift one to the left/right, the shifted area will
have a displaced depth. Shutter glasses, orthostereography, parallax barrier technology (3D), lenticular displays and
virtual reality
 Gestalt Approach
 The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
Lecture 5- Form Perception  Top- down approach
Marr’s Approach  How we group and separate figures from the
 David Marr 1945-1980 developed a ‘bottom-up’ ground, sees forms and shapes rather than lines
approach which starts with input to the perceptual and figures
system in the form of a retinal image  Perceptual organisation: Ambiguity does not
 Each stage takes the information of the previous generally arise in the real world, see objects
stage and makes it more complex according to their elements taken together as a
 Computational model- computational theory, whole, innate laws determine the way in which
algorithmic, mechanism objects are perceived.
 Retinal image-> grey level description (measuring  Similar things are grouped together- can be due to
intensity of light at each point in image)-> primal shape, lightness, orientation, size etc
sketch (representation of contrast change- blobs,  Good continuation: Points that when connected
edges, bars- over a range of spatial frequencies)-> result in a smooth line are seen as belonging
21/2D sketch (representation of orientation, depth, together
and colour relative to the observer)-> 3D  Proximity: Objects that are close together are
representation (representation of objects independent grouped
of  Connectedness: Things that are physically
Gestalt- Figure ground separation
connected are perceived as a unit
 In a visual scene, some objects are more prominent
 Closure: Geometrically closed patterns are
(figures) than others (ground), there are factors that
preferred to geometrically open patterns, we
affect whether something will be seen as the ground
‘complete’ a broken figure due to the strong closure
or as a figure
cue
 Symmetry: Symmetrical areas usually figure
 Common fate: Things that are moving in the same
 Convexity: Figures are usually convex
direction or have the same orientation are grouped
 Area: Stimuli with comparatively smaller area are
together
usually figures
 Familiarity: Things are grouped together if the
 Orientation: Vertical/horizontal orientations are
groups appear meaningful or familiar
usually figure
 Invariance: Where the perception of an object is
 Meaning/importance: Meaningful objects more likely Bottom-up vs top-down processing
to be seen as a figure (implies top-down processing)  Bottom-up processing: Starts from the bottom
Positive Points Gestalt considering physical stimuli being perceived then
 Their laws actually are generally correct works way up to higher order cognitive processes
 Percepts can be analysed into basic elements (organizing principles and concepts), higher

 The whole is greater than the sum of its part cognitive processes cannot directly influence

 Context and experience effect perception processing at lower levels

Problems with Gestalt approach
 Underplay parallel processing and unconscious
processing
 Explanation for some laws was wrong
 Laws provide description rather than explanation
 Laws are badly designed- Präganz doesn’t state the
simplest shape
 Top- down processing: The perceiver (constructs)
builds a cognitive understanding (perception) of a
stimulus, using sensory info as the foundation for the
structure as well as other sources
 During perception we quickly form and test various
hypotheses regarding percepts based on: sensory
data, knowledge stored in memory, inferences, what
we expect
 Lecture 4- Visual Cortex
Optic nerve and optic tract
 Ganglion cell fibres leave retina along optic nerve
 The optic chiasm is the cross over point, some fibres cross
over and some don’t
 Beyond the optic chiasm the optic nerve becomes the optic
tract
 Information now separated by visual field rather than the
eye
 Information from right visual field is represented by left
hemisphere and vice versa
 The optic tract feeds into the LGN: Bilateral structure, one
of each side of the hemisphere- each LGN receives input
from left and right eyes but keeps these inputs separate
 LGN have the same receptive field organisation as retinal
ganglion cells- centre- surround antagonism
Orientation Columns
 Orientation preferences of V1 cells arranged in an ordered
way
 Organisation is investigated by: Recording from an
electrode penetrating the cortex perpendicular to the
surface, recording from an electrode penetrating the cortex
at an angle to the surface
Beyond V1
 Over 30 visual areas beyond V1 which are specialised: v3
Form, v4 colour, v5 motion but all areas are interconnected
 What stream: travels ventrally to inferotemporal cortex for
recognising and discriminating objects. Where stream:
travels dorsally to posterior parietal cortex for determining
where an object is and how to act on it, Pathways are not
separate as signals flow both ways
 Evidence 1: Monkey lesion studies, task 1: object
discrimination (food under prism) and task 2: Landmark
discrimination (food close to the cylinder) , had to find food.
Lesion to what pathway causes problems for discrimination.
Lesion to where pathway causes problems to landmark
task
 Evidence (Neuropsychology): Visual form agnosia (damage
to what cannot identify objects but know features). Optic
ataxia (damage to where can recognise objects but cannot
grasp to reach them)
 Feature detectors: V1 cells respond to features of an
image, as we move higher up in visual system receptive
fields get more complex and features, they respond to
V1: Primary visual cortex
 V1 receives input from LGN
 It is also known as striate cortex
 V1 cells have a level of baseline activity with
no stimulus, found no response for dots of light
shown but there was a response when the
edge of a stimulus
 V1 cells prefer lines of a particular orientation
Organisation of the V1
Cortical Magnification
 Amount of cortex devoted to representing
each part of the retinal field
 Fovea represented by large area of cortex
Ocular Dominance Columns
 Cells in LGN are monocular, 80% of cells in V1
are binocular- most respond better to one eye-
ocular dominance
Retinotopic Mapping
 Objects close together in the visual scene are
analysed by neighbouring parts of the V1
Receptive fields in V1
 Simple cells: Respond to orientated
bars/edges, has elongated excitatory and
inhibitory regions, a vertical bar only covers
the excitatory regions, if it is tilted then it
covers some of the inhibitory and excitatory
regions, causing a weak excitatory response, if
it is a horizontal bar only a small part of the
excitatory region is covered creating an
inhibitory response. Simple cells have a
preferred orientation of bars, they can one
excitatory and one inhibitory region and are
edge detectors
 Complex cells: Respond to orientated lines
with no discrete ON/OFF regions, they are
phase insensitive. Respond to moving
orientated bars/edges and respond best to a
particular movement
 Hypercomplex cells: AKA end-stopped cells,
respond to bars: of a particular orientation,
moving in a particular direction and a particular
length. The bars must hit the ends of the
hypercomplex cell to be recognised
Lecture 3- Receptor Processes
Simultaneous contrast illusion
 Four equally bright grey patches on
backgrounds of differing
makes the bright grey patches seem
different colours
Ganglion cell response
 Spots of light increases action potentials, light in a specific
colours, area increases frequency
 If just outside this circle, there is a lower response than no
light being there

Receptive fields
Retinal Ganglion Cells
 The area on the retina which when stimulated by light, elicits
 Fewer ganglion cells than
a change in firing rate of the cells
photoreceptors
 Types of region: Excitatory (increases cell response rate)
 Ganglion cells must condense raw
and inhibitory (decreases cell response rate)
information from the photoreceptors
 Convergence influences this region on the retina
 Extracts important information from
 Lateral inhibition: Inhibition that is transmitted across the
retinal image
retina by horizontal and amacrine cells
 Is measured with single cell recording
 There is baseline activity and A,B,C are intermediates which can
experimenters try and see what become inhibitory or excitatory
changes this 1+2 and 6+7 fire, go through
inhibitory intermediate and don’t fire.
3+4+5 fire and go straight to
Centre- surround antagonism
ganglion cells so is excitatory
 If light hits centre for on surround, excitatory
etc Visual Illusions
 Can therefore detect spots of light and edges  Hermann grid- see illusory grey squares in a grid
of objects as there are always some areas of  2 on-centre cells centred on light regions of the
light and dark grid, when RF is at intersection more light falls on
 Importance of boundaries as you can still tell the surround, so receives inhibition and cell fires
what something is when it is not filled in less.
 Less firing is perceived as less bright so we
perceive a darker spot
 Illusory grey spots disappear when we fixate on
them, receptive field larger so light falls on
excitatory part of cell
 However, this disappears when the ‘squares’ have
wiggly not straight lines
Visual Illusions 2
 Simultaneous contrast illusion- the grey
square one above
 Bright light falls in centre for all images, more
inhibition with light grey
 When there is less contrast the colours look
more similar so will seem brighter on a dark
background
 Sensation and Perception
Lecture 1
Transduction: Physical energy
is converted to electrical
The physical object in the impulse energy
environment

Distal Stimulus Proximal Stimulus Receptor Process

Representation of the distal

stimulus, comes from multiple Electrical signals
environmental cues are passed
Neural Processing between
neurones
Placing an object in a category

Action Recognition Perception

Conscious sensory
Movement/behaviour experience of stimulus

Knowledge

Existing knowledge, assumptions that change

the perception of the stimuli. Comes from
experience as well as top down and bottom-up
processing
Psychophysics: Uses carefully controlled
experiments to test perceptual
performance, results to highlight
Approaches to studying perception
relationship between physical world and
perceptual experience

Physiological: What is going on in the brain itself

Psychophysical: what we perceive the stimuli

Studying anatomy Psychophysical Approach

 Single cell recording (measuring voltage changes in a
single neuron
 Imaging: fMRI, MEG, EEG, PET
 Micro stimulation: A microelectrode stimulates a small
number of neurones with a small current
 Lesioning: Examining patients who have a brain injury
 TMS: Stimulates brain function by using magnetic
 Examines the relationship between the stimulus
in the physical world and the perception in the
psychological world
 Absolute (detection)- smallest magnitude we can
perceive. Method 1: Method of adjustment,
people say ‘I see it’ when they see the stimulus
whilst it gradually comes into view. Method 2:

fields Absolute Threshold Forced choice, which contains the stimuli

Sense
Vision A candle flame seen 30miles away in the  Difference (discrimination) what is the smallest
dark on a clear night difference we can perceive. Related to baseline
Hearin The tick of a watch 20 feet away in quiet
g conditions level, the difference is the proportion of the
Taste One teaspoon of sugar in 2 gallons of baseline level is constant. Measured with:
water
Smell One drop of perfume diffused into the Forced choice
entire volume of a 3 room apartment  Absolute threshold is taken as intensity that
Touch Wing of a bee falling on your cheek from
1cm away gives 75% correct performance
 Lecture 2- Distal and Proximal stimulus
Light Cones Rods
Number in retina
 Form of electromagnetic ~6energy
million ~120 million Physical Psychological
Retinal distribution Everywhere including the fovea aside from Everywhere in the peripheryColour
Wavelength (so not fovea) and
 It is reflected from objects and into
blindspots blindspots Intensity Brightness
Sensitivity
the eye Low- only works when there is lots of light High- works well in low light
Acuity High- less convergence, 6 cones to 1 Low- High convergence, 120 rods connect to
 Light hits the distal stimulus to create
ganglion, so multiple signals one ganglion cell so only sends one signal
Numbertheof types
proximal stimulus 3- Red, green, blue 1
Colour perception? Colour Monochromatic- most sensitive to green light
Lumi Daylight phototropic Night light scotopic
nance range operation

The Eye Receptors are in the retina and the function

of the eye is to focus the image on the retina

Iris and pupil

 Adjustable aperture, changes the amount
of light that can pass through. Allows us to
deal with a large range of light levels
 Pupil is between ~2mm-~9mm diameter

Cornea and Lens The Retina

 Role is to focus light on the retina
 Cornea- 80% of focusing power
 Lens- 20% but can change due to action of
ciliary muscles
 Accommodation: lens become fatter to focus
close objects, lens becomes thinner to focus far
objects
 Refractive errors: myopia (near-sightedness)
and hyperopia (farsightedness)
 Light (photo) sensitive layer at the back of the eye
 Different types of cells: cones (~120m colour), rods
(~6m, monochromatic)
 Photoreceptors carry out transduction, by visual
photopigments react to light to trigger electrical signals
 Photoreceptors form layer furthest from incoming light
 Light passes through blood vessels, cells, axons to
reach photoreceptors

 Bright light bleaches photopigments so photoreceptors

stop responding, going from bright to dark the
photoreceptors must recover or regain sensitivity.