Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Unit 4: Sensation and Perception - Coggle Diagram
Unit 4: Sensation and Perception
Technichal Ideas
Basic Concepts
Example: Everyone hears the same music, but some people like it while others don’t, same sensation, different perception.
Bottom-Up Processing: Starting with raw sensory input and building up to understanding (like a child learning to read).
Perception: How our brain makes sense of that information (like recognizing a song or a face).
Sensation: When our senses pick up information from the world (like seeing light or hearing sound).
Top-Down Processing: Using what we already know to interpret sensations (like reading a sentence with a typo but still understanding it).
Vision
How We See:
Binocular Disparity: Each eye sees things slightly differently, which helps us judge depth (like how far away something is).
Cones: Help us see colors and fine details.
Rods: Help us see in low light (like at night).
Light enters the eye through the pupil.
Color Vision:
Trichromatic Theory: We have three types of cones that detect red, green, and blue light.
Opponent-Process Theory: Our brain processes colors in pairs (red vs. green, blue vs. yellow, black vs. white).
Dark & Light Adaptation:
Moving from light to dark: It takes time for rods to kick in (why it’s hard to see in a dark room at first).
Moving from dark to light: Cones activate quickly, but the sudden brightness can be overwhelming.
Hearing
Sound waves enter the ear and make the eardrum vibrate
These vibrations travel to the cochlea, where tiny hair cells turn them into electrical signals.
The brain processes these signals in the auditory cortex.
Touch
Skin Receptors: Detect things like pressure, temperature, and pain.
Proprioception: The sense of where your body is in space (like knowing where your arm is without looking).
Phantom Limb: After losing a limb, some people still feel it (their brain hasn’t adjusted to the change).
Smell and Taste
Smell: Chemicals in the air bind to receptors in the nose, sending signals to the brain.
Taste: Chemicals in food bind to taste buds on the tongue.
Five Basic Tastes: Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami (savory).
Flavor: Combines taste and smell (food tastes bland when you can’t smell it).
Anosmia: Losing the sense of smell, often due to injury or illness.
Multimodal Perception
Super-Additive Effect: When we use more than one sense (such as vision and hearing), experiences become richer.
Just Noticeable Difference (JND): The minimum difference in a stimulus that we can perceive (such as hearing a slight increase in loudness).
Absolute Threshold: The minimum quantity of stimulus that we can perceive (such as the softest sound we can hear).
Personal Reflections
Basic Concepts
I was watching a movie with my friend and we both witnessed the same sequences, but I found it amusing while they perceived it as being sad.
How fascinating that our own perceptions are so varied!
Its essential that we dont take these senses granted.
Vision
When I go into a dark room, it takes a couple of minutes for my eyes to adjust.
Isn't it great how the rods and cones work together to help us in various lighting.
Hearing
I employ my sense of hearing on a regular basis, especially when crossing the road.
I wouldn't know how to survive if I were unable to hear vehicles coming.
Touch
Touch is absolutely essential to me, I love giving hugs to my family and friends.
Amazing that the brain is able to still 'sense' a missing limb.
Smell and Taste
I love the scent of coffee in the morning, it's what rouses me before I even sip.
When I'm ill with a cold, food simply does not taste quite as good.
Multimodal Perception
Watching a film with surround sound actually makes it more realistic. It's as if the images and the sound work together to pull me into the plot.
I witnessed this myself when I watched a movie with my friends in my house not too long ago