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75 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Sensation and Perception
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Sensation: detecting simple properties of stimuli (without making sense of them- no perception of interpretation) Perception: detecting more complex properties of stimuli which involves learning (figuring out its meaning). It is rapid, automatic and unconscious. We recognize what's presented with out sense organs. These interact when you detect a stimulus (sensation) and then begin to analyze it and learn more about it (perception) |
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Distal Stimulus
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The stimulus in the environment
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Proximal Stimulus
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The stimulus as it is stimulating our sense receptors (ex. sound waves that vibrate your auditory hair cells are proximal stimuli)
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Bottom-Up Processing
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Examining each of the components of the environmental stimulus first, and then synthesizing the whole
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Top-Down Processing
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Using out existing cognitive structures (memories, thoughts) to influence out processing of the environmental stimulus. The memories and thoughts help to fill in blank information. It allows you to impose order on what you're perceiving. |
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Psychophysics
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"The physics of the mind" Studying the relation between the physical characteristics of the environmental stimuli (the distal stimulus) and the sensations they produce (the proximal stimulus) |
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Threshold
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The line between not perceiving and perceiving |
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Absolute Threshold
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Refers to the minimum value of a stimulus that can be detected. It is the very first JND.
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Just Noticeable Difference (JND)
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Its the minimum detectable difference between 2 stimuli, also called the Difference Threshold. The JND is directly related to the magnitude of the stimulus (ex. candle light in a dark room vs candle light in a bright room) low magnitude=small JND high magnitude=large JND |
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Signal Detection Theory
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A theory of how stimuli are detected- taking into account the need to discriminate the stimulus from the noise and the participant's willingness to report their detection of the signal.
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4 possibilities in judging the presence or absence of a stimulus
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Hit (saw a signal and it was there) Miss (didn't see a signal and it was there) False Alarm (saw a signal but it wasn't there) Correct Negative (didn't see a signal and there was nothing there) |
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Response Bias |
When you're uncertain, you may say you heard something when you didn't or vice versa.
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Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curve
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The curve shows performance when the sound is difficult to hear (detect), hence the participant's response bias. This signal detection method is effective at determining the subject's sensitivity to the occurrence of a particular stimulus. |
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Detectability
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Is measured by the relative distances of the curves from a 45 degree straight line on the ROC curve.
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Subliminal Perception
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The registration of sensory input without conscious awareness ( putting the message to eat popcorn throughout a movie made popcorn sales rise- you're unconsciously behaving in favour of that message) Subliminal stimulation generally produces weak effects. |
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Receptor Cells (Coding)
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Specialized neurons that receive the incoming environmental stimulus and turn this into an action potential (which is then carried toward the CNS)
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Anatomical Coding
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Different types of environmental energy are coded by different neurons The brain interprets the location and type of sensory stimulus according to which incoming nerve fibres are active. |
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Temporal Coding
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Another way that the nervous system represents information. Some features are coded by the pattern of neural activity.
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Transduction (Coding)
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The conversion of one form of energy into another. In the nervous system, transduction occurs when environmental energy is transformed into electrical energy Sense organs convert energy from environmental events into neural activity. |
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Sensory Adaptation
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Is a gradual decline of sensitivity due to prolonged stimulation. (ex. going nose blind to smells)
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Functions of the eye
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Two main purposes: channel light to the neural tissue that receives it (the retina) and they house that tissue.
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How does the eye work?
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Light enters though a transparent "window" at the front, the cornea The cornea and the crystalline lens (located behind it) form an upside down image of objects on the retina where the brain can relate positions on the retina to the corresponding positions in the world |
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Lens
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The transparent eye structure that focuses the light rays falling on the retina. When you focus on a close object, the lens of your eye gets fatter (rounder) When you focus on a distant object, the lens flattens out |
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Iris
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The coloured ring of muscle surrounding the pupil
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Pupil
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The opening in the centre of the iris that helps regulate the amount of light passing into the rear chamber of the eye. When it constricts, it lets less light in and sharpens the image falling on the retina When it expands, it lets more light in, making the image less sharp. |
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Optic Disk
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A hole in the retina where the optic nerve fibres exit the eye
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Fovea
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A tiny spot in the centre of the retina that contains only cones; visual acuity is greatest at this spot.
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Retina
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The neural tissue lining the inside black surface of the eye It absorbs light, processes images, and sends visual information to the brain. It contains two types of receptors; rods and cones. |
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Rods
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Specialized visual receptors that play a key role in night and peripheral vision. They handle night vision because they are more sensitive than cones in dim light They greatly outnumber the amount of cones in the periphery of the retina so they are responsible for the peripheral vision. |
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Cones
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Specialized visual receptors that play a key role in daylight and colour vision. They are concentrated most heavily in the centre of the retina and quickly fall off in density toward its periphery. Provide better visual activity (sharpness and precise detail) than rods do. |
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The Blind Spot
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A spot in the retina where all of the axons of the ganglion cells exit the eye (the optic disk) and therefore there are no photoreceptors in this area.
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How does information processing happen in the retina?
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Light striking the retina's receptors (rods and cones) triggers neural signals that pass into the intricate network of cells in the retina, which in turn send impulses along the optic nerve. These axons, which depart from the eye through the optic disk, carry visual information, encoded as a stream of neural impulses, to the brain.
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How is light transduced into neural energy?
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Light is reflected off the distal objects, enters the eye and stimulates the photoreceptors (the proximal stimulus). 2 types of photoreceptors; cones and rods that contain photo pigment Rods have one type of photo pigment and cones have three. |
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How does the eye adapt to the dark?
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Cones are responsible for the initial adjustment but are not as sensitive to dim light as rods are. Rods take longer to adjust to the dark but once they catch up (usually within 20-30 mins) there is a second wave of adjustment.
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How does the eye adapt to the light?
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The reverse of dark adaptation occurs. Rods are responsible for the initial adjustment but are not as sensitive to brighter light. The cones take longer to adjust but they are more sensitive to the light and they provide the second wave of adjustment.
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How is visual information processed?
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Most visual information goes to the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe. There are specialized cells in this cortex that respond to different stimuli. Simple cells-respond best to a line of the correct width, oriented at the correct angle and located in the correct position. Complex cells-also care about width and orientation, but they respond to any position in their receptive fields. |
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Visual pathways to the brain
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Ventral stream: processes the details of what objects are out there. It's associated with out perception of the world Dorsal Stream: processes where objects are. There are visuomotor modules in the dorsal stream that are related to vision for action or control of goal directed movements. |
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How does the eye perceive colour?
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Perceived colour is primarily a function of the dominant wavelength in a mixture of wavelengths. Lights with the longest wavelengths appear red. Those with the shortest wavelengths appear violet. Colour is a psychological perception, not a property of light itself. |
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Opponent-Process theory
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Holds that colour perception depends on receptors that make antagonistic responses to three pairs of colours. (Red vs Green, Yellow vs Blue, Black vs White) It explains some aspects of colour-blindness; it characterizes the colour-perception of people with other perceptual dysfunctions. |
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Complementary Colours
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Pairs of colours that produce grey tones when mixed together.
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Afterimage
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A visual image that persists even when a stimulus is removed.
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Trichromatic Theory
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Holds that the human eye has three types of receptors with differing sensitivities to different wavelengths. The eye contains specialized receptors sensitive to the specific wavelengths associated with red, green, and blue. People can see all colours of the rainbow through colour mixing (a light for any colour can be matched by the additive mixture of three primary colours) |
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Colour Blindness
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Encompasses a variety of deficiencies in the ability to distinguish among colours. Most people who are colour blind are dichromats; they have only two colour channels. 3 types of dichromats that are each insensitive to one of the primary colours. |
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How does colour affect behaviour?
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Colours can have an automatic unconscious effect on behaviour. People learn associations based on certain colours (red pen=error) Through evolution, certain colours may have had adaptive significance for survival or reproduction (blood and fire=red=danger) |
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How do we perceive forms, patterns and objects?
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Perceptions of form and pattern entail feature analysis. You start with the components of a form (lines, edges, and corners) and build them into perceptions of shapes and objects. It involves the interpretation of sensory input. Reversible figures- you can see one thing when focusing on a specific theme but once the theme changes, so does the image. (manipulating people's expectations) |
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Feature Analysis
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The process of detecting specific elements in visual input and assembling them into amore complex form. Assumes that form perception involves bottom-up processing.
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Gestalt Principles
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Figure and Ground- Dividing visual displays into figure and ground is a fundamental way in which people organize visual perceptions Proximity- things that are closer to one another seem to belong together. Closure- people often group elements to create a sense of closure, or completeness Similarity-People tend to group stimuli together that are similar Simplicity- The idea is that people tend to group elements that combine to form a good figure Continuity- reflects people's tendency to follow in whatever direction they've been led. |
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Depth Perception
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Involves interpretation of visual cues that indicate how near or far away objects are. To make these judgements, people rely heavily on a variety of clues that can be classified as binocular or monocular. |
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Binocular Cues
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Clues about the distance based on the differing views of the two eyes. 3-D videos use two cameras the film on a slightly different angle to make you perceive the picture has depth. (Retinal Disparity) Convergence: a binocular cue that involves sensing the eyes converging toward each other as they focus on other objects. |
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Monocular Cues
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Clues about distance based on the image in either eye alone. (2 kinds) Motion Parallax: involves images of objects at different distances moving across the retina at different rates Pictorial Depth Cues: clues about distance that can be given in a flat picture. |
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Optical Illusion
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Involves an apparently inexplicable discrepancy between the appearance of a visual stimulus and its physical reality.
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Why do we experience illusions?
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Optical illusions show how contextual factors such as depth cues shape perceptual hypotheses. They demonstrate that human perceptions are subjective.
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Sound Waves
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Usually generated by vibrating objects but can also be generated by forcing air past a chamber (pipe organ) or by suddenly releasing a burst of air (clapping) They're characterized by their amplitude, wavelength and their purity. |
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Wavelengths |
They are described in terms of their frequency. Higher frequency, the higher the pitch, the lower the frequency, the lower the pitch. What people can hear is only a portion of the available range of sounds. |
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External Ear |
Depends on the vibrations of air molecules. Consists of mainly the pinna- a sound-collecting cone. Sound waves collected by the pinna are funnelled along the auditory canal toward the eardrum in the middle ear. |
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Middle Ear
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Depends on the vibration of moveable bones. The vibrations in the eardrum are transmitted inward by a mechanical chain made up of the three tiniest bones on your body; the hammer, anvil and the stirrup) known as the ossicles. The ossicles form a three-stage lever system that converts relatively large movements with little force into smaller motions with greater force. They serve to amplify tiny changes in air pressure. |
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Inner Ear
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Depends on waves in a fluid. Consists largely of the cochlea; a fluid-filled, coiled tunnel that contains the receptors for hearing. Sound enters the cochlea through the oval window which is vibrate by the ossicles. The ear's neural tissue lies within the cochlea which sits on the basilar membrane which holds the auditory receptors. |
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Auditory Receptors
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"hair cells" waves in the fluid of the inner ear stimulate the hair cells which convert this physical stimulation into neural impulses that are sent to the brain. The signals are routed through the thalamus to the auditory cortex, which is located mostly in the temporal lobes of the brain. |
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Place Theory (Theory of Hearing)
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Each frequency (pitch) produces a vibration I a specific location on the basilar membrane. Assumes that hair cells at various locations respond independently and that different sets of hair cells are vibrated by different sound frequencies. |
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Frequency Theory (Theory of Hearing)
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Perception of frequency depends on the rate of firing of the auditory nerve. Views that the basilar membrane works more as a drumhead than a harp; the whole membrane vibrates as a whole, not individual parts. |
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Auditory Localization
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Describes an organism's ability to perceive the location of the source of a sound. Time difference, volume difference If something happens directly in-front of or behind you, neither of these things work. |
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Effects of Music
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The brains of musicians are identifiable and they would be larger in areas such as motor, auditory, and visuospatial areas of the cerebellum than brains of non-musicians.
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Decoding Speech Prosody: Featured Study
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Researchers suggested there was a parallel between music and speech in terms of how emotions are expressed. 43 seven year olds, 30 got musical training for a year, the rest didn't. The stimuli consisted of 4 neural sentences spoken in 4 different ways to convey different emotions, in different languages (total of 32 spoken sentences) For happy/sad sentences everyone did well (no difference between musical training) For fearful and angry sentences, the musically and drama trained kids were better at identifying those emotions. |
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How do we experience taste?
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The physical stimuli for taste are chemical substances that are soluble. The gustatory receptors are clusters of taste cells found in the taste buds that line the trenches around tiny bumps on the tongue. When they absorb chemicals dissolved in saliva, they trigger neural impulses that are routed through the thalamus to the cortex. |
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Four primary tastes
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sweet sour bitter salty |
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How do we differ in our ability to taste?
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Perceptions of taste quality appear to depend on complex patterns of neural activity initiated by taste receptors. Some basic taste preferences appear to be innate and to be automatically regulated by physiological mechanisms. Taste preferences are largely learned by social processes- what foods you have been exposed to. |
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The Olfactory System
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The receptors for smell are olfactory cilia (hair-like structures located in the upper portion of the nasal passages. Olfactory receptors have axons that synapse with cells in the olfactory bulb and then are routed directly to various areas in the cortex. |
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Pheromones
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Chemical messages, typically imperceptible, that can be sent by one organism and received by another member of the same species. Sense of smell is used as a form of communication, they are often linked to sexual activity and physical attraction |
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How do we experience touch?
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Cells in the nervous system that respond to touch are sensitive to specific patches of skin which vary in size. If a stimulus is applied continuously to a specific spot on the skin, the perception of pressure gradually fades. |
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What is the brain pathway for pressure?
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The nerve fibres that carry oncoming information about the tactile stimulation are routed through the spinal cord to the brainstem where the fibres from each side cross over mostly to the opposite side of the brain. The tactile pathway then projects through the thalamus and onto the somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobe.
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What are the pain pathways? |
The receptors for pain are mostly free nerve endings in the skin. Pain messages are transmitted to the brain via two types of pathways that pass through different areas in the thalamus. Fast Pathway- registers localized pain and relays it to the cortex. (ex. sharp pain when you cut your finger) Depends on A-delta fibres. Slow Pathway- lags a second or two behind the fast system. It conveys less localized, longer-lasting, aching or burning pain that comes after the initial injury. Depends on C fibres |
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The Gate-Control theory of pain
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Holds that incoming pain sensations must pass through a "gate" in the spinal cord that can be closed, thus blocking ascending pain signals.
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Puzzles in Pain Perception
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Pain is not an automatic result of certain types of stimulation and it is subjective. If you are distracted with something else other than the pain you are experiencing, you forget you have pain; therefore the tissue damage that sends pain impulses doesn't necessarily result in the experience of pain Puzzle of the phantom limb- amputees feel the presence of the limb they have lost as well as the pain it brought. |
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Kinesthetic Senses
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The kinesthetic system monitors the positions of the various parts of the body. Most kinesthetic stimulation is transmitted to the brain along the same pathway as tactile stimulation. |
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Vestibular Senses
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The vestibular system, responds to gravity and keeps you informed of your body's location in space.It provides the sense of balance, compensating for changes in the body's position.It shares the space in the inner ear with the auditory system. The semicircular canals make up the majority of the system.
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