PSYC105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Stapes, Low Frequency, Thalamus
10 May 2018
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PSYC105 Lecture
VI: Perception
Psychophysics
• This refers to the scientific study of the subjective experience of perception
• The relationship between physical stimuli and psychology
• Psychophysics techniques enable researchers to take reliable measurements for what people
see, hear, feel, etc. when exposed to particular stimuli
• Our understanding of perception depends on these
How many senses do we have?
• Sight
• Hearing
• Smell
• Taste
• Touch
• Balance
• Body awareness
• Heat
Sixth sense?
• Extra Sensory Perception (ESP)?
• No evidence that it exists
Perception
• But surely what you sense is what is really there?
• Sight works like a video camera?
• Hearing works like a digital recorder?
• We need to understand how we process the information from our senses
• The study of how we get information about our environment
• The only way we get information about our environment
• We can only directly perceive a small amount of the information in our environment
Sensation vs perception
• Sensation - detection of physical energy by the sense organs
• Perception - the brain’s interpretation of the sensory inputs
• BUT - more sensible to think of the whole sequence of events as the process of perception (or
of perceiving)
Sensory integration?
• Sometimes information from 2 or more senses is “integrated” by our brains
Touch (Somatosensation)
• The various layers of skin contain a bewildering array of receptors with an astonishing range
of sizes and shapes
• Receptors in your skin which convert pressure into neural signals and therefore signal touch
• Others convert heat energy into neural signals and therefore signal temperature
• But there can’t possibly be receptors in your skin that respond to pain because there is no pain
“out there” in the world for them to respond to
• Any stimulation if intense enough can cause pain
Somatosensory cortex
• Touch information is conveyed to the somatosensory cortex
• At the top of the brain
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