Human's Senses And Perception

The understanding of the human mind and its superior ability to those of other species has been a grand scientific anomaly for generations. The mind 's ability to perceive different stimuli and produce different emotions based on that stimuli is truly remarkable. The question is how do a human 's senses and perceptions relate to their emotion? What kind of emotions are evoked in people as they are exposed to different stimuli? Why can what people see, hear, or taste make them feel emotions such as happiness or sadness? The answer can be found in the way the human mind functions and interprets the world around it. To fully understand how emotions can relate to the senses one must first fully understand emotions and how they work. An emotion …show more content…
The brain experiences and gathers information about the world through five different senses. Seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching are the different ways people gather information about their surroundings. The information that is gathered is sent to the brain which uses the data to formulate ideas, opinions, and assess the situation. Sensory receptors are neurons that are able to react to stimuli through the nervous system. The ability to be aware of this stimuli is known as sensation and perception allows people to interpret what the stimuli means. For example sensation would be someone being aware of noise coming from a TV, but perception might tell them that the volume on the TV is too loud or quiet (Sweeney 100). Everyone perceives stimuli differently and there is no right or wrong way to perceive them. Since everyone interprets stimuli differently there is no way to tell which interpretation accurately represents reality (Sweeney 103). Edgar Allen Poe might have been defining the role of perception when he wrote, "all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream" (qtd. in Sweeney). As the brain processes information, it is able to fit different perceptions into patterns. For example, when someone sees a basketball their brain processes the basketball 's shape, color, texture, height, and other details. The brain would then conclude that this person is looking at a basketball (Sweeney 103). The brain is able to remember the details of different sounds, sights, and tastes and memorize their aspects. This is how people are able to see or hear something and know exactly what it is. A person 's sense of sight is able to detect millions of bits of information in less than a second. A person 's eyes are able to detect wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers. This spectrum is known as visible light and strikes the retina in the back of the