PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Sensory Neuron, Sound Energy, Neural Adaptation

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jordan Poppenk

Document Summary

Sensation process by which our sensory system gather information about the environment: receptor cells: transformation of chemical, mechanical, light, and sound energy into electrical activity in the brain. Perception selection, organization, and interpretation of sensation as meaningful objects and events. Transduction conversion of physical energy into electrical potentials: sensory receptor cells, specialized neurons, stimuli vary, quantitatively amount/ quantity that can be measured objectively, qualitatively - quality/ characteristic other than magnitude. Proprioception sense of relative position of limbs and other body parts: from receptors in muscles and joints, kinesthesis sense of movement of limbs and other parts of the body. Doctrine of specific nerve energies johannes muller: sensory receptors are uniquely sensitive to particular types of energy. Adequate stimulus type of physical energy to which a sensory receptor is especially tuned. Pattern (population) code information conveyed in activity across a whole population (a lot of cells) instead of individual, single nerve cells.