PSY-1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Ewald Hering, Trichromacy, Basilar Membrane
Document Summary
Finally scientists began to get some of the sensory mechanisms right. Action at a distance: how input to ears turns into brain representations. Earlier physicists solved the first problem, helmholtz solved the second. Key is that we cannot have a different neuron for every sound structure. Helmholtz postulated that the fibers in the basilar membrane of cochlea vibrate" like an array of tuning forks to specific tonal frequencies. There are auditory nerves for each frequency region. It was on the right track, but others got things better scientifically. It is now believed that humans an perceive on the order of millions of colors. We can"t have millions of specialized nerve fibers. Young and helmholtz believed that there are just 3 red, green, blue-violet. A color -> red, green, blue-violet -> brain resolves color -> color perception. R + g + b-v = white, r+g=yellow, etc. : there are more than one combo for each color.
