PSYA01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Hair Cell, Olfactory Epithelium, Taste Bud
Document Summary
Sensory adaptation: sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an organism adapts to current conditions. Our senses encode the information our brains perceive: Sensation: simple stimulation of a sense organ; basic registration of light, sound, pressure, odor or taste as parts of the body interact with the physical world. Perception: takes place at the level of your brain: it is the organization, identification and interpretation of the sensation in order to form a mental representation. Our senses are the means by which we experience the world; everything we learn is detected by sense organs and transmitted to our brains by sensory nerves. Senses depend on the process of transduction: what takes place when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into encoded neural signals sent to the. Fechner: developed this approach to measure sensation and perception: methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the observer"s sensitivity to that stimulus.