PSYC 221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Eardrum, Auditory Cortex, Visual Cortex

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 221
• Professor: Richard Wright

Document Summary

Lecture 3: far senses are auditory and visual senses (hearing and seeing). Transduction is conversion, it is the stage where one form of information is converted into another form. So for seeing, light energy (electromagnetic radiation) is converted into a neural code that the brain can understand. It happens in our eyeballs and the transducers in our eyes are our photoreceptors: the transducers in the ear are tiny little hairs that are called cilia. While talking, there is a pressure wave that moves across the room and causes the ear drums to vibrate slightly (the ear drums will vibrate even w/ the tiniest little change in air pressure). When the ear drums start to vibrate, it causes a chain reaction which causes these little hairs in the inner ear to bend. These hairs that bend, they then cause neuro signalling which go to the auditory cortex.