PSYCH 240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Franciscus Donders, Neural Coding, Behavioral Neuroscience
Document Summary
Infer what"s going on inside the black box: Construct theories then design experiments to test the predictions of those theories. If the experiments work supports the theory, if not may need to change theory. Also, try to constrain our theories with information from neuropsychology, biopsychology, and neuroscience. How neurons transit information: transduction: from physical to neural, neural coding, interactivity, neural computation. Create percepts of lines/shapes/color and everything else from patterns of light on our retina. The stimulus input must be processed and coded for intensity (i. e. , strong smell vs. weak smell, bright vs. dim light, loud vs. soft sound) and qualitative aspects (e. g. , red vs. blue, foul vs. pleasant, a flat vs. b sharp). Typically, much of this coding happens at post-receptor sites. Color coding begins at level of the receptors. Light is emitted from a light source and the light hits some distal stimulus (a tree, a car, your bff).
