PSY280H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Otolith, Vestibular System, Linear Motion
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Document Summary
Lecture 11 vestibular system continued & touch. Linear motion and tilt: otolith organs sense linear acceleration and gravity. 2 in each ear: utricle which has around 30,000 hair cells, saccule which has around 16,000 hair cells. Each otolith contains macula which serves as the detector of linear accelerations and gravity: planar structure and sensitive to shear forces, otoconia: a structure contains calcium carbonate crystals encasing the hair cells, the mammalian vestibular system. Codes amplitude in the otolith: larger accelerations, greater forces. Direction coding: arises in part from the anatomical orientation of the organs, utricular macula horizontal plane, saccular macula vertical plane, spatial orientation perception. Translation perception: people can still use a joystick to record distance traveled quite accurately, means that the brain remembers and replicates the velocity trajectory. Tilt perception: human are very sensitive to tilt angles 0-90, and good at detecting how they are tilted and how much they are tilted.
