Animals use their sensory systems to acquire information about many diverse and behaviorally relevant stimuli, ranging from a preferred food item to an approaching predator or the song of a potential mate. In order to make adaptive decisions, animals must constantly make critical judgments about various features of the stimuli they encounter. One such general feature important in nearly all animal behaviors can be described as âstimulus intensityâ (e.g., how big is it, or how close is it, or how loud is it, or how bright is it?). This is a key feature of stimuli that an animalâs nervous system must encode. In a concise and well-informed essay that uses terms, concepts, and ideas from this course and discusses all relevant similarities and differences, describe how variation in stimulus intensity can be encoded in (i) postsynaptic potentials, (ii) action potentials, and (iii) compound action potentials.
Animals use their sensory systems to acquire information about many diverse and behaviorally relevant stimuli, ranging from a preferred food item to an approaching predator or the song of a potential mate. In order to make adaptive decisions, animals must constantly make critical judgments about various features of the stimuli they encounter. One such general feature important in nearly all animal behaviors can be described as âstimulus intensityâ (e.g., how big is it, or how close is it, or how loud is it, or how bright is it?). This is a key feature of stimuli that an animalâs nervous system must encode. In a concise and well-informed essay that uses terms, concepts, and ideas from this course and discusses all relevant similarities and differences, describe how variation in stimulus intensity can be encoded in (i) postsynaptic potentials, (ii) action potentials, and (iii) compound action potentials.
