PSYC 6 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Synesthesia, Sensory Neuroscience, Psych
15 Oct 2020
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Synesthesia- when a visual image has a taste. Reports date back as far as ancient greece. Effects of synesthesia: responsible for understanding numbers. Brain area responsible for seeing colors is near area. One area of brain has adopted the other"s role. Might lead to creativity-> unrelated topics become related. Creative people have higher incidence of synesthesia than noncreative people do. Sensation- detection of physical stimuli and transmission of that information to the brain. Physical stimuli- sound waves, molecules of food or odor, temperature changes. Perception- brain"s further processing, organization, and interpretation of sensory info. Bottom-up processing- based on physical features of stimulus. Grapefruit recognition: strong scent, cool moisture, sharp taste. Top-down processing- knowledge, expectations, and past experience shape interpretation of sensory info. We see what we expect to see. Describe how sensory information is translated into meaningful stimuli. Sensory coding- translating physical properties of stimuli into patterns of neural impulses transduction- translating physical stimuli into signals brain can interpret.
