PSYC-1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Visual Cortex, Big Miracle, Thalamus
13 Sep 2018
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Transduction - translating external stimuli into the language of the nervous system. Bottom-up processing : taking sensory information and sending it to the brain. Top-down processing: using the brain"s knowledge, ideas, and expectations to interpret sensory information. The minimum level of intensity needed to detect a stimulus half the time - not. Why: absolute thresholds are not absolute : singal. Not just intensify of the stimulus; but also Psychological factors such as the person"s experience, expectations, motivations, and alertness: for example: Exhausted parents adapt quickly to all the background noises, but are. Motivated to remain vigilant to the tiniest whimper from the new baby, despite background noise like traffic, planes, conversations, etc. Vision : the basics: retina , brain: Photorecpetors: rods and cones: when light reaches the back of the retina, it triggers chemical changes in the receptor cells, called rods and cones.
