PSYC 215 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Psychophysics, Neural Coding, Proprioception
20 Nov 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Sensation, perception, and sensory modality: sensations are simple conscious experiences generated by stimulation of a sense organ. Immediate, automatic: perceptions are complex, meaningful experiences of objects and events. Relates to the qualities of conscious experiences. Private, accessible only to the person who has them. Qualia divide up the sensory world into qualitatively different modes of sensation aka sensory modalities. 4 other modalities that don"t have visible sense organs: balance (vestibular sense, body position (proprioception, body motion (kinesthesis, pain (nociception) Seeing, hearing, and balance are distinguished through physical terms (i. e. detect different forms of energy electromagnetic, radiation, air pressure waves) Smell and taste both detect chemicals, but they differ in their neural pathways: cerebral cortex. All senses have receptor cells which convert energy into electrical nerve impulses. Receptor signals are carried to the brain along a number of different pathways, with signals in each modality arriving at a specific area of the cerebral cortex.
