Sensation and Perception

Sensation: your window to the world

Perception: interpreting what comes
in your window.
Sensations and Perceptions

 Sensations - the passive process of

bringing information from the outside
world into the body and to the brain.
 Perception - the active process of
selecting, organizing, and interpreting
the information brought to the brain
by the senses
What is Sensation?
 A stimulus can be measured
in a variety of ways including
it’s size, duration, intensity, or
wavelength.
 A Sensation occurs anytime a
stimulus activates one of your
receptors.
 The sense organs then detect
any change in energy, such
as light, heat, sound, and
physical pressure.
What is Sensation?
 Sensation occurs when special receptors
in the sense organs—the eyes, ears,
nose, skin, and taste buds—are activated,
allowing various forms of outside stimuli to
become neural signals in the brain. (This
process of converting outside stimuli, such
as light, into neural activity is called
transduction.)
Sensory systems
 Transduction - Communication between the
brain & the rest of the body occurs via neuron.
Information goes from the senses to the
 thalamus , then to the various areas in the brain.
All senses involve something called receptor
cells. Their job is to transduce (transform or
even “translate”) physical stimulation/physical
energy from the environment into
electrochemical messages that can be
understood by the brain.
Psychophysics
 This explains how sensation and
perception are related
 Psychophysics: The study of the
relationships between sensory
experiences and the physical stimuli that
cause them!
So where do vision and hearing
(& the other senses) happen?
 The Brain!
 The physical energy in
the environment is
detected by the eyes,
ears, etc. but we can’t
see, hear, etc. until the
brain interprets them—
i.e., makes sense of
them. So in a way, we
see, hear, smell, etc. in
our brains!
Absolute Threshold
 The Absolute Threshold is the level of
stimulus that produces a positive response
of detection 50% of the time.
 the lowest level of stimulation that a
person can consciously detect 50 percent
of the time the stimulation is present.
 Weber’s law of just noticeable
differences (jnd, or the difference
threshold).
•The difference threshold is the amount of
change needed for us to recognize that a
change has occurred.
•It’s the smallest difference between two
stimuli that is detectable 50 percent of the
time
•Weber's Law states that “The larger or
stronger the stimulus, the larger the
change required for a person to notice that
anything has happened to it.”
 Example
• Imagine holding a five pound weight and
one pound was added. Most of us would
notice this difference. But what if we were
holding a fifty pound weight? Would we
notice if another pound wereadded? The
reason many of us would not is because
the change required to detect a difference
has to represent a percentage. In the first
scenario, one pound would increase the
weight by 20%, in the second, that same
weight would add only an additional 2%.
Sensory Adaptation
 Adaptation (sometimes called habituation) is a part
of everyday experience. It’s a decreased
responsiveness to stimuli due to constant
stimulation.
 We are able to respond to the changes in
our environment because our senses
have the ability to adapt, or adjust
themselves, to a constant level of
 stimulation.
Once your senses get used to a new level of a
stimulation, they respond only to deviations from it.
Examples of Adaptation
 1. Your eyes eventually adjust to a
darkened movie theatre. At first you
see blackness, but eventually, you can
see what is going on around you.

 2. When you first jump into a pool that

“feels cold” your body reacts to the
stimulus. Eventually, your body
adapts to the sensation and you
become “comfortable.”

 3. When you first walk into a sports

locker room, the smell is almost
nauseating. After a while, your senses
adjust and you can hardly tell.
Visual Sensation
• Vision is the most studied of all of the senses! Our
most dominating sense.
• There are many parts of an eye but the basic ones
are the cornea, iris, retina, optic nerve and pupil.
• Our eye is stimulated by various wavelengths of
light. The different wavelengths are responsible
for the diversity of colors we see. There are many
other types of waves that our eye cannot detect.
• Light is electromagnetic radiation that travels in
the form of waves. Light is emitted from the sun,
stars, fire, and lightbulbs. Most other objects just
reflect light.
The Human Eye
 Sensory Receptor Cells
• There are two types of sensory receptor
cells which are located on the retina
– Rods
– Cones
• Rods enable us to see black and white, are
more sensitive to light, and there are 100
million in each eye
• Cones enable us to see color, they work
best in bright light, there are 6.5 million in
each eye and they are located mostly at
the center of the eye
 Sensory Receptor Cells
• These cells transform light energy into
neural impulses that are sent to various
areas in the brain through the bundle of
neurons called the optic nerve.
• What is the place called in which the optic
nerve leaves the eye?
– The blind spot
• Why is it called “the blind spot”?
– Because there are no rods & cones
on this area
(there are neurons instead), images that fall
on this area of the retina are not “seen”!
 Light/Brightness and Dark
Adaptation
• Dark adaptation occurs as the eye recovers its
ability to see when going from a brightly lit state
to a dark state. (The light-sensitive pigments
that
allow us to see are able to regenerate or
“recharge” in the dark.) The brighter the light
• was, the longer it takes the rods to adapt to the
new lower levels of light
When going from a darkened room to one that is
brightly lit, the opposite process occurs. The
cones have to adapt to the increased level of
light, and they accomplish this light adaptation
much more quickly than the rods adapt to
darkness—it takes a few seconds at most (Hood,
 Common Visual defects
• Hyperopia/farsight • Color blindness
edness - Totally color blind
• Presbyopia - Partially color blind
• Myopia/nearsighted
ness
• Astigmatism
• Tunnel vision
• Diplopia
• Scotoma
Auditory/Hearing Sensation
 Hearing
• Hearing depends on
vibrations in the air called
sound waves.
• Sound waves from the air pass through
various bones until they reach the inner
ear, which contains tiny hair like cells that
move back and forth.
• These hair cells change sound vibrations
into neuronal signals that travel through
the auditory nerve to the brain.
 We hear sound WAVES

• The height of the wave gives us the amplitude of the

• sound.
The frequency of the wave gives us the pitch if the sound.
 Three parts:
• External or outer ear – Function: Gathering sound
energy and amplification of sound pressure.
-pinna, external meatus, eardrum/tympanic
membrane
• Middle ear Function: Transmission of acoustic
energy from air to the cochlea.
- Hammer, anvil, stirrup
• Inner ear Function: Transformation of
mechanical waves (sound) into electric signals
(neural signals).
– vestibular portion, cochlea, basilar membrane
Auditory defects =Deafness
• There are 2 types of deafness:
– 1. Conduction Deafness: occurs when
anything hinders physical motion through the
outer or middle ear or when the bones of the
middle ear become rigid and cannot carry
sounds inward. (Can be helped with a
conventional hearing aid.)
– 2. Sensorineural Deafness: Occurs from
damage to the Cochlea, the hair cells, or the
auditory neurons. (Complete Sensorineural
deafness cannot be helped by a hearing aid.)
Olfactory/Smelling Sensation
 Olfactory/Smelling
Sensation
• Smell depends on sensory
receptors that respond to
• airborne chemicals.
In humans, these chemoreceptors are located
in the olfactory epithelium — a patch of tissue
about the size of a postage stamp located high in
the nasal cavity. The olfactory epithelium is made
-sensory neurons
up of three each
kinds of with a primary cilium
cells:
-supporting cells between them
-basal cells that divide regularly producing a fresh
crop of sensory neurons to replace those that die
Some classifications of odor
• Camphoric – • Pungent - Vinegar
Mothballs • Putrid - Rotten
• Musky – Perfume Eggs
• Roses – Floral • Fruity – oranges
• Pepperminty - Mint • Spicy – spices
Gum • Smoky – anything
• Etheral - Dry burning
Cleaning Fluid
 Disorders of olfaction:

• Anosmia – inability to smell

• Cacosmia – things smell like feces
• Dysosmia – things smell different than they
should
• Hyperosmia – an abnormally acute sense of
smell.
• Hyposmia – decreased ability to smell
• Olfactory Reference Syndrome – psychological
disorder which causes the patient to imagine he
• or she has strong body odor
• Parosmia – things smell worse than they should
Phantosmia – "hallucinated smell," often
unpleasant in nature
 Gustatory/Taste Sensation
• Gustation - The sensation of taste
– We have bumps on our tongue called papillae.
Taste buds are located on the papillae (they are actually all
over the mouth).

• Your tongue and the roof of your mouth are

covered with thousands of tiny taste buds. When
you eat something, the saliva in your mouth
helps break down your food. This causes the
receptor cells located in your tastes buds to send
messages through sensory nerves to your brain.
Your brain then tells you what flavors you are
tasting.
Taste Sensation
 Gustatory/Taste Sensation
• Five basic tastes
– Sweet
– Sour
– Salty
– Bitter
–
Umami
Sense of touch/Cutaneous or
skin sensation
• Skin - The largest organ of your body
Performs many important biological functions while also
providing much of what is known as sensual pleasure
• Our sense of touch is controlled by a huge network
of
nerve endings and touch receptors in the skin known
as
the somatosensory system. This system is
3 layers:
responsible for
– Epidermis
all - outerwe
the sensations layer
feel - cold, hot, smooth, rough,
– Dermis -tickle,
pressure, intermediate layervibrations, and more.
itch, pain,
– Deep layers of subcutaneous adipose tissue
 Sensory functions
• Factual experiences
– pressure and
pain
• Thermal
experiences –
warmth and cold
Skin Senses

• Melzack and Wall

– Gate-control theory
• Contend that there is an area in the spinal cord that
can act like a “gate” and either inhibit pain
messages or transmit them to the brain
• You feel pain when pain messages carried by the
small, slow-conducting nerve fibers reach the gate
and cause it to open
• Contend that messages from the brain to the spinal
cord can inhibit the transmission of pain messages
at the spinal gate and thereby affect the perception
of pain