Sensation And Perception Research Paper

Sensation and perception work together to help the brain make sense of the world we see. There cells, called sensory receptors, are the ones that send stimulus to the brain through afferent nerves, which are responsible for carrying information to the brain and spinal cord. This process is called the bottom-up processing, and it means that the information is being sent to the brain for interpretation. Then there is top-down processing, which works opposite of bottom-up processing. To make sense of this information, take the eyes as an example: imagine looking at a cup of coffee. The eyes register an object, but they, alone, cannot make sense of what they are looking at. That is when top-down comes into action. Top-down is when the brain interprets the stimulus and recognizes the object as a cup of coffee.
The eye is the sense organ that detects stimulus, or light. The retina is in the back of the eye and is responsible for converting electromagnetic energy into neural impulses to be processed by the brain. There are two types of receptor cells in the retina, which are rods and cones. Rods are sensitive to light and work best in dim lighting, but are not useful for color vision. On the contrary, cones are what we use for color perception. The cones are …show more content…
The optic nerve carries the visual stimuli to the thalamus, where it is sorted and sent to the correct place in the brain for interpretation. The thalamus is in the forebrain at the top of the brain stem, and it is from there that the information is transferred to the visual cortex in the occipital love at the back of the brain. Light travels in a straight line into the eye. Therefore, any stimuli registered on the right side of the eye is sent straight to the left side of the brain. This works the same way for the left eye, meaning that any light registered on the left side of the eye will be sent to the right side of the