PSYC 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Visual Acuity, Ganglion Cell, Receptive Field

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Oliver Hardt

Document Summary

Brain is only organ completely encased in bone; protection, but isolation from environment. Must gather information and derive meaning from it. Em waves of light, sound, air pressure: raw materials of perception transduced (translated) by sensory system into electrochemical language of brain, brain combines info with previous experience to create a perception. Can read a sentence with jumbled letters b/c brain uses years of reading experience to make a guess Bottom-up: neural processing that starts with physical message or sensations --> early level analysis that prepares the info for use. Top-down: combination of early neural organization with understanding of world to interpret and organize the info. Humans born with specific predisposed ways of organizing info so that it has utility. Laws of gestalt/gestalt principles of organization outline how we see the world. Can tune out background noise at a party to engage in a conversation. Principle of figure group: process of determining which parts of a visual scene belong together.