PSYC 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Cribriform Plate, Hot Tub, Fried Chicken
27 Jun 2018
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How different stimuli enter our body and affect our perception of the world.
Sensation is the process by which our sensory organs and nervous system respond to stimuli
in the environment.
Perception is our brain's interpretation of what reality is.
Plus and dot cards - Your eye has a blind spot where the dot is not visible when you cover
the left eye. When you don't see the dot, you see blank space of the same color that the
background is. Your brain fills up your blind spot.
Signals are sent to our brain through different stimuli which leads to perception of the brain,
but perception can be biased through what we view, cultural biases, amount of sleep, moods.
Same physical stimuli can be perceived differently by 2 different people which can be
completely different from reality depending on the biases. What you see is not always real.
General Sensory Process:
Physical stimulus is a matter or energy influencing the body. It can be a wave of sound. It
elicits a physiological response through chemical/electrical activity in the body like when the
light hits our retina. This leads to a sensory experience which is a subjective sensation or
perception.
Sensory receptors are specialized structures that respond to physical stimuli by producing
electrical changes that initiate neural impulses in sensory neurons. Sensory neurons are
neurons that carry information from sensory receptors into the CNS.
Preserving information about physical stimuli is called sensory coding.
Quantitative variation - intensity of the stimuli. Qualitative variation - precise kind of
stimuli, wavelengths and frequency.
Transduction - process by which a receptor cell produces an electrical charge in response to
physical stimulation.
FIGURE 7.1
Smell:
Smell and taste are chemical senses - stimuli are chemical molecules
One of our most primitive senses. Mammals use smell to find meals or keep themselves safe.
Olfactory Bulb is the part of the brain that holds the olfactory receptors. It is quite large.
Bears have 7 times better smell than a blood hound. Human brain's olfactory bulb is
extremely small and has diminished. We can barely see it.
Airborne odor molecules coming from the apple pie are inhaled through the nose (physical
stimulus). Air is constantly entering and leaving our nose all the time. The odor molecules
bind to the olfactory receptor cells in the nasal cavity and stimulates them. There is a
physical part of the brain that hangs in the deep part of the nose (fibers of olfactory nerves).
The odor molecules bind and carry out transduction where it converts the stimulation to
neural signals for the olfactory bulb which sends it to the brain in the olfactory cortex (found
in the temporal lobe). They connect to the temporal lobe a part of the neural pathway
involved with conscious recognition of smells. Mucus is in the nose to catch the odorants
from travelling all the way to the brain. Brain injury due to car accidents usually leads to loss
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Document Summary
How different stimuli enter our body and affect our perception of the world. Sensation is the process by which our sensory organs and nervous system respond to stimuli in the environment. Perception is our brain"s interpretation of what reality is. Plus and dot cards - your eye has a blind spot where the dot is not visible when you cover the left eye. When you don"t see the dot, you see blank space of the same color that the background is. Signals are sent to our brain through different stimuli which leads to perception of the brain, but perception can be biased through what we view, cultural biases, amount of sleep, moods. Same physical stimuli can be perceived differently by 2 different people which can be completely different from reality depending on the biases. Physical stimulus is a matter or energy influencing the body.
