Sensation

Prepared and Compiled by

Dipesh Upadhyay
 The rule of 10,000 hours and a
ballet dancer
• Malcolm Gladwell’s book- ‘Outliers’
 Main Topics

• Sensation meaning,process, transduction,

sensory receptors,
• Just Noticeable Difference (JND),asbolute
threshold, subliminal stimuli,
• Sensory habituation, sensory adaptation
• Visual sensation and auditory sensation
 Sensation
• It is primary knowledge of external world
• It is simple and meaningless
• Hence, also known as raw material for
experience
• As it has no meaning if further attention is
not paid or perceptual organization is not
made
• Sensation is a process by which our body
gathers information about the environment
through various sensory organs
 Sensation and transduction
• Sensation occurs when special receptors in
the sense organs are activated, allowing various
forms of outside stimuli to become neural signals
in the brain.
• This process of converting outside stimuli, such
as light, into neural activity is called transduction
 SENSORY RECEPTORS
• The sensory receptors are specialized forms of
neurons, the cells that make up the nervous
system.
• Instead of receiving neurotransmitters from other
cells, these receptor cells are stimulated by
different kinds of energy—for example, the
receptors in the eyes are stimulated by light
• The receptors in the ears are activated by
vibrations.
• Touch receptors are stimulated by pressure or
temperature, and
• The receptors for taste and smell are triggered
by chemical substances.
 JND
• Just noticeable difference ( jnd or the difference
threshold) the smallest difference between two
stimuli that is detectable 50 percent of the time.
 Absolute threshold
• An absolute threshold is the lowest level of
stimulation that a person can consciously
detect 50 percent of the time the stimulation
is present.
• For example, assuming a very quiet room
and normal hearing, how far away can
someone sit and you might still hear the tick
of their analog watch on half of the trials?
 Absolute Threshold Examples
• Taste: 1 gram (.0356 ounce) of table salt in 500 liters (529
quarts) of water
• Smell: 1 drop of perfume diffused throughout a three-room
apartment
• Touch: the wing of a bee falling on your cheek from a height
of 1cm (.39 inch)
• Hearing: the tick of a watch from 6 meters (20 feet) in very
quiet conditions
• Vision: a candle flame seen from 50km (30 miles) on a clear,
dark night
 Subliminal Stimuli and
Perception
• Stimuli that are below the level of conscious
awareness are called subliminal stimuli.
• (The word limin means “threshold,” so sublimin
means “below the threshold.”)
• These stimuli are just strong enough to activate
the sensory receptors but not strong enough for
people to be consciously aware of them.
• Many people believe that these stimuli act upon
the unconscious mind, influencing behavior in a
process called subliminal perception.
 Sensory Habituation
• The brain is only interested in changes in
information.
• Sensory habituation is the tendency of the brain to
stop attending to constant, unchanging information.
• the lower centers of the brain filter sensory
stimulation and “ignore” or prevent conscious
attention to stimuli that do not change.
 Sensory Adaptation
• Sensory adaptation is the tendency of
sensory receptor cells to become less
responsive to a stimulus that is
unchanging.
• Sometimes I can smell my friend wearing
socks with very bad odor when he first
comes to my room, but after a while the
smell seems to go away
 Different Types of Sensory Experiences,
Sense Organs and Their Receptor
Specific Sensations Receptors
Visual (Vision) Eye
Auditory (Hearing) Ears
Gustatory (Taste) Tongue
Olfactory (Smell) Nose
Cutaneous (Skin) Temperature (cold, warm,
touch, pain)
Kinesthetic (Muscular) Muscle
Visceral Internal organs i.e. heart,
intestine
Vestibular (Balance and Two ear tube connected to
Equilibrium of body) cerebellum
Cerebral Cortex
 Visual Sensation
• Cornea
• Pupil
• Retina
• Cones
• Rods
• Fovea
• Iris

16
Details of the Retina
Light

Impulses produced by
light

Photoreceptors
 Visual Sensation
• Iris: smooth ring of muscle with a central opening (pupil).
Gives us our eye color

• Pupil: Pupil changes in size depending on intensity of

light.
– Intense light, small constricted pupil
– Dim light, dilated pupils

• Lens: focuses light on retina (convex).

– lens is round for nearby objects
– lens is flatter for distant objects
 Visual Sensation
• Rods
– Allow humans to see in black, white, and shades of
gray in dim light
– Mostly in the periphery
– Take 20 – 30 minutes to fully adapt to darkness

• Cones
– Enable humans to see color and fine detail in
adequate light, but that do not function in dim light
– Mostly in the fovea
– Adapt fully to darkness in 2 – 3 minutes
 Visual Sensation

Three Types of Cones

S-Cones M-Cones L-Cones

(Sensitive to blue) (Sensitive to Green) (Sensitive to Red)
 Visual Sensation

• Hue: The property of light commonly referred to as

color, determined primarily by the wavelength of light
reflected from a surface

• Saturation: The degree to which light waves

producing a color are of the same wavelength; the
purity of a color

• Brightness: The dimension of visual sensation that

is dependent on the intensity of light reflected from a
surface and that corresponds to the amplitude of the
light wave
Say the name of these colors as fast as you can
 Sensitivity to Light Across Biological
Organisms
• Sunflowers and other
plants turn to face the
sun
• Earth worms do not have
eyes, but will die if
exposed to too much
sun, so there skin cells
senses photons as
pressure, that cause the
worm to move in the right
direction, a form of
attention called
phototropism.
 Sensitivity to Light Across Biological
Organisms

• Rattlesnakes detect in
infrared;

• bees detect ultraviolet light.

Auditory Sensation
 Auditory Transduction
1. Sound waves strike
eardrum, setting
cochlear fluid into
motion
2. Fluid waves vibrate the
basilar membrane,
bending the hair cells in
the organ of Corti
3. Neurotransmitters are
released into the
synapse, resulting in a
nerve impulse
 Auditory Sensation
• Audition
– The sensation of hearing; the process of hearing
• Frequency
– Measured in the unit called the hertz, the number of
sound waves or cycles per second, determining the
pitch of the sound
– The human ear can hear sound frequencies from low
bass tones of around 20 Hz to high-pitched sounds of
about 20,000 Hz
 Auditory Sensation
• Amplitude
– Measured in decibels, the magnitude or intensity of a
sound wave, determining the loudness of the sound;
the amplitude of a light wave affects the brightness of
a visual stimulus
– The measuring unit used, bel, is named after
Alexander Graham Bell
• Decibel
– A unit of measurement of the intensity or loudness of
sound based on the amplitude of the sound wave
Auditory Sensation
 Auditory Sensation

• Inner ear
– The innermost portion of the ear, containing the
cochlea, the vestibular sacs, and the semicircular
canals
– Cochlea: The snail-shaped, fluid-filled chamber in the inner
ear that contains the hair cells (the sound receptors)
– Hair cells: Sensory receptors for hearing, found in the
cochlea
Olfactory Sensation
 Olfactory Sensation
• Olfaction
– The sensation of smell; the process of smelling
– You cannot smell a substance unless some of its
molecules vaporize
• Olfactory epithelium
– Two 1-square-inch patches of tissue, one at the top
of each nasal cavity, which together contain about
10 million olfactory neurons, the receptors for smell
• Olfactory bulbs
– Two matchstick-sized structures above the nasal
cavities, where smell sensations first register in the
brain
 Gustatory Sensation

• Gustation: The sensation of taste

• Four basic tastes

– Sweet
– Sour
– Salty
– Bitter
Gustatory Sensation
 Gustation

A “taste”
results from
complex
patterns of
neural activity
produced by
the four types
of taste
receptors
 Cutaneous Sensation
• Skin
– The largest organ of your body
– Performs many important biological functions while
also providing much of what is known as sensual
pleasure, temperature

• Tactile
– Pertaining to the sense of touch
– Information that is conveyed to the brain when an
object touches and depresses the skin, stimulating one
or more of the several distinct types of receptors found
in the nerve endings
Cutaneous Sensation
 Cutaneous Sensation

• Pain
– Motivates us to tend to injuries, to restrict activity,
and to seek medical help
– Teaches us to avoid pain-producing circumstances
in the future
 Kinesthetic Sensation
• Kinesthetic sense
– The sense providing information about relative position
and movement of body parts
– Gives the position of body parts in relation to each
other and the movement of the entire body and/or its
parts
 Vestibular Senses
• Vestibular senses provide information
about equilibrium and body position
• Fluid moves in two vestibular sacs
• Vestibular organs are also responsible for
motion sickness
• Motion sickness may be caused by
discrepancies between visual information
and vestibular sensation
A Zen Story “I will work very
hard….”
 Activity: PFA how to act in an
emergency or disaster
• a Self Help Exercise for psychological
wellbeing: How to feel better when
disoriented: grounding technique
psychological first aid (PFA)