Chapter 5

Sensation

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Sensation/Perception

 Transduction: sensory receptors convert a

physical energy into nerve impulses
2
Sensation and Perception

Sensation is the detection of physical

energy emitted or reflected by
physical objects

Perception is a set of processes that

organize sensory impulses into
meaningful patterns
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Prosopagnosia

4
The Senses

 Vision Bees can see

 Hearing ultraviolet light
 Taste
 Touch
 Smell

Bats can
hear
ultrasonic
sound
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Vision

 What and how we see…

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 What we strikes the eye
is not particles of the
colour but pulses of
electromagnetic energy
(so it’s not like the
process of smelling or
tasting)

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The stimulus for vision is light
 Our sensory experience of light is
determined by two physical properties –
wavelength and amplitude

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 Light is a wave…

 Wave properties result in

 Hue – Hue is determined by the wavelength of
light – the red of petals/green of stems have
different wavelengths
 Brightness – Brightness is determined by
intensity, the amount of energy in light waves,
from the amplitude of the wave
 Saturation (purity of light) – how much of the
light is at the exact wavelength you are
looking at 10
Hue
Shorter wavelength (or higher frequency):
produces violet or blue light

Longer wavelength (or lower frequency):

produces red or orange light

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Greater amplitude Brightness
(brighter colours):

Smaller amplitude
(duller colours):

12
Saturation

When light contains only a single wavelength, it

is said to be “pure” and the resulting color is
said to be completely saturated. 13

White light is completely unsaturated.

The process of seeing

 Essentially, the retina receives upside-

down images of the world and millions
of receptor cells convert particles of
light energy into neural impulses and
send those to the brain. At the brain,
the impulses are reassembled into a
perceived, right-side up image

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Anatomy of the Eye

In the back of
the eye,
objects appear
upside down.
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The Eye:
Receptor for Vision
 Cornea – outer shell of eye (protection)
 Pupil – opening through which light enters eye
 Iris – colored part of the eye that expands or contracts
controlling the size of the pupil to let more or less light
in depending on light intensity
 Lens - changes shape (accommodation) to bring image
into focus on the retina

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The Eye:
Receptor for Vision
 Optic Nerve – formed of fibers from ganglion
cells; leaves the eye and starts back toward
other parts of the brain
 Fovea – small area of retina with the best
visual acuity. It is packed with cones cells (no
rods!).
 Blind spot – where nerve impulses from rods
and cones leave the eye

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  Light entering the eye
triggers photochemical
reaction in receptor cells
(rods and cones)
The Retina
 Chemical changes spark
neural signals, activating
nearby bipolar cells
Cones handle colour
 The bipolar cells activate Rods monochromatic
the ganglion cells (their
axons form the optic nerve)
 The optic nerve carries 18

information to the brain

 Cones handle colour
The Retina
Rods monochromatic

Note that light does not fall directly on the rods and cones. It must
first pass through the cornea, the lens, the vitreous humor (a jelly-
like substance that fills the eyeball) and the outer layers
19 of the retina.
Only about half of the light that enters the eye reaches the rods &
cones.
 Photoreceptors

 Photoreceptors are light-sensitive cells found

within the retina.
 Rods are sensitive to light, but not color, and are
active under low-light conditions.
 Cones are sensitive to color, are not active in
low-light conditions, and allow for fine detail

 Rods and cones use different photopigments that

react to light so as to generate action potentials.

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21
Rods and Cones
 Rods (120 million)
 Allow humans to see in black, white, and shades of
gray in dim light
 Mostly in the periphery
 Share bipolar cells and send combined messages
 Take 20 – 30 minutes to fully adapt to darkness

 Cones (6 million)
 Enable humans to see color and fine detail in adequate
light, but that do not function in dim light
 Mostly in the fovea
 Each one transmits to a single bipolar cell (hotline to
brain) hence good at details
 Adapt fully to darkness in 2 – 3 minutes
Blind Spot
 Where the optic nerve leaves the eye, called the “Optic
Disc” there are no rods or cones which creates a blind spot

 So why don’t we see this blind spot?

 The rest of the image is there
 Our eyes move fast to pick up the complete image
 The brain fills in the missing information

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Figure 4.7

FIGURE 4.7 Experiencing the blind spot. (a) With your right eye closed, stare at
the upper right cross. Move your head and you should be able to locate a
position that makes the black spot disappear. When it does, it is on your blind
spot. With a little practice you can learn to make people or objects you dislike
disappear too! (b) Repeat the procedure described, but stare at the lower cross.
When the yellow space falls on the blind spot, the black lines24
will appear to be
continuous. This may help you understand why you do not usually notice a blind
spot in your visual field.
Or – does this slide work better?
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 EYE: VISION
 Visual pathways: eye to brain
 Firstlevel of processing takes place in the retina –
help encode and analyze sensory info

 Optic nerve
 nerve impulses flow through the optic nerve as it
exits from the back of the eye
 the exit point is the “blind spot”
 the optic nerves partially cross and pass through
the thalamus
 the thalamus relays impulses to the back of the
26

occipital lobe in the right and left hemisphere

27
 Feature Detector Neurons
 Activation of retinal cells
by light results in action
potentials that travel
along neurons that
project to the occipital
cortex
 It is believed that
different neurons in the
visual cortex respond to
different features of a
scene

For example, one neuron will respond to a line like

28

and another neuron will respond to a line like

 Parallel processing
 The brain subdivides visual scenes into motion, form, depth
and colour and processes each aspect simultaneously
 We then construct our perceptions by integrating the
separately processed visual information
 If a neural workstation for a specific visual task is destroyed
or disabled then peculiar results can take place -

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 Color Vision

 Trichromatic theory – first proposed by

Thomas Young (1802) and revised by Herman
von Helmholtz(1852)
 The eye contains 3 distinct receptors for color
 Each responds best to one of 3 primary colors
of light: red, blue, and green
 Bycombining these 3, all other colors can be
produced

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31
 The tulip isn’t ‘red’ in
fact it is everything but
red as it rejects
(reflects) the red
wavelength
 The light wavelengths
are not coloured – colour
is processed in the brain
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The relative sensitivities of three types of
cones to lights of differing wavelengths.

Three Types of Cones

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S-Cones M-Cones L-Cones
(Sensitive to blue) (Sensitive to Green) (Sensitive to Red)
Opponent-Process Theory
 Not only do the three classes of cells
increase their firing rate to signal one color
but they also decrease their firing rate to
signal the opposing color (red/green,
yellow/blue, white/black)

 Proof of this can be seen in afterimages

 after you have stared at one color in an
opponent-process pair (red/green, yellow/blue,
black/white), the cell responding to that color
tires and the opponent cell begins to fire,
producing the afterimage of the opposite colour
mixing colour

 mixing paint
blue + yellow = green
(really cyan)

 mixing lights
red + green = yellow

 called additive (light) and subtractive (paint)

colour

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additive colour
- mixing light
 physically both colours in the mixed light
 like a chord in music
 light is really red + green
 we see yellow

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subtractive - mixing paint

 cyan paint absorbs a lot of red

 yellow paint absorbs a lot of blue
 cyan + yellow absorbs most of the red and blue leaving
mainly green light reflected
 so we see green

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Additive Colours

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 Subtractive Colours
• Used for mixing inks
for printing.

• Primary colors are:

- Yellow
- Cyan
- Magenta

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Subtractive Colours

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 Colour Vision: Other
Species
 Bees see into the
ultraviolet. What glorious
colours do they see?

 Most mammals are all or

partially colour ‘blind’.

Our view (top)

Dog’s view (bottom
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Color Blindness

 Inability to perceive some

colors
 totalcolor blindness is rare
 red-green is most common
much more common among
men than women
 recessive, sex-linked trait on X
chromosome
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Figure 4.12

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 Vision Problems

 Hyperopia: Difficulty focusing nearby objects

(farsightedness)
 Myopia: Difficulty focusing distant objects
(nearsightedness)
 Astigmatism: Corneal, lens, or eye defect that causes
some areas of vision to be out of focus; relatively
common
 Presbyopia: Farsightedness caused by aging

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Audition

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 Audition

The Receptor Organ: Receptors within the ear are

tuned to detect sound waves
(series of pressures of air
beating against the ear).

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Waves of compression in the air, or vibrations, are the
stimulus for hearing. The frequency of47 sound waves
determines their pitch. The amplitude determines loudness.
Hearing

 What We Hear
 Loudness is the dimension of auditory
experience related to the intensity of a wave’s
pressure
 Intensity is the amplitude or height of the
wave
 Sound is measured in decibels
 The average “Absolute Threshold” of
hearing in human beings is zero decibels

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49
Audition: Pitch Versus
Intensity

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 Hearing
 What We Hear
 Pitch is the dimension of auditory experience
related to the frequency of the sound wave
(and to some extent, its intensity)
 Frequency is the number of waves that pass by
in one second
 One wave per second is known as one Hertz
A healthy ear of a young person normally
detects frequencies in the 16 to 20,000 Hz

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Hearing

 What We Hear
 Timbre (purity) is the distinguishing
quality of a sound, or the complexity
of the sound wave
 Timbre is what makes a note played on
a flute, (pure sound) sound entirely
different from the same note played
on an oboe (a complex sound)

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Vision vs. Audition

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 (connects to
the brain)

(tympanic membrane)

(connects to the nose)

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Parts of the Ear

 Outer ear
 function – air conduction
 consists of three structures

external ear (pinna)

 pick up sound waves and then send them down the auditory canal

auditory canal
 long tube that funnels sound waves down its length so that the waves
strike the tympanic membrane (ear drum)

tympanic membrane (ear drum)

 Sound waves strike the tympanic membrane and cause it to vibrate
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Parts of the Ear
 Middle ear
 bony cavity sealed at each end by membranes
which concentrates the vibrations of the eardrum
on the cochlea’s oval window
 the membranes are connected by three tiny bones
called ossicles: hammer, anvil and stirrup
 anvil receives vibrations from the hammer
 stirrup
makes the chammer is attached to the
back of the tympanic membrane
 onnection to the oval window (end membrane)
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 Anatomy of the Ear

(Sound Waves)

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Parts of the Ear

 Inner ear
 contains two structures sealed by bone

 cochlea: involved in hearing

 function is transduction - transforms
vibrations into nerve impulses that are
sent to the brain for processing into
auditory information
 vestibular system: involved in balance,
position in space, and acceleration
 semicircular canals (fluid-filled tubes)
and vestibular sacs
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Vestibular System and Motion
Sickness
 Motion sickness is directly related to
vestibular system.
 Sensory Conflict Theory: Motion sickness
occurs because vestibular system sensations
do not match sensations from the eyes and
body.
 After spinning and stopping, fluid in semicircular canals is still
spinning, but head is not.
 Mismatch leads to sickness.

 Medications, relaxation, and lying down might

help.
60
Hearing

 Cochlea – major structure of inner ear

 The receptor cells in the cochlea look like bristles and are called hair cells or
cilia
 When the fluid inside the cochlea moves, the basiliar membrane is bent up
& down which stimulates receptors (hair cells)
 When exposed to an extremely loud noise for a brief period or a moderate
level for a sustained period these cells will flop over like broken blades of
grass. (If damaged, hearing loss can result.)

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 VESTIBULAR SYSTEM:
BALANCE
 Position and balance
 vestibular system is located above the cochlea in the inner ear
 includes semicircular canals (bony arches set at different angles)
 each semicircular canal is filled with fluid that moves in response to movements
of your head
 canals have hair cells that respond to the fluid movement
 function of vestibular system: sensing the position of the head, keeping the head
upright, and maintaining balance

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Deafness (Hearing Loss)

 Conduction Deafness:
 Poor transfer of sounds from tympanic membrane to inner
ear
 Compensate with amplifier (hearing aid)
 Nerve Deafness: Caused by damage to hair cells or
auditory nerve
 Hearing aids useless in these cases, since auditory
messages cannot reach the brain
 Cochlear Implant: electronic device that stimulates
auditory nerves; still not very successful

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Preventable Hearing Problems

 Stimulation Deafness:
 Damage caused by exposing hair cells to excessively loud
sounds
 Typical at rock concerts
 By age 65, 40% of hair cells are gone

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Audition – what pitch do we hear?

 Place Theory
 the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea’s
membrane is stimulated

 Frequency Theory
 the theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve
matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch

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Somesthesis

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Somesthesis

the perception of body

position and
movement and
muscular tensions
etc.

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Somesthesis

 Touching: therapeutic and pleasing

 Massage
 Cuddling
 Sex
 Therapy dogs
 Sunbathing
 Preference for smoothness and skin
 Preference for contrast
 Sauna freaks
 Warm blankets and cool air
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 Touch

 A square inch of skin

contains nearly 20 million
cells
 Our ability to discriminate
among types of cutaneous
sensation is due to a unique
combination of responses
the receptor cells have to
various types of stimulation
 Touch
 includes pressure,
temperature, and pain
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Somesthesis: Sensory
Homunculus
somatosensory
cortex

located in the
parietal lobe

transforms
nerve impulses
into sensations
of touch
temperature,
and pain
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Touch

 Hair receptors
 free nerve endings wrapped around the base of each hair
follicle
 hair follicles fire with a burst of activity when first bent
 If hair remains bent for a period of time, the receptors
will cease firing. This is referred to as sensory adaptation
– for example: wearing a watch

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A classic demonstration that our sense of what is hot
can be constructed from sensations of what is warm
and cold. 72
 Olfaction

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Olfaction

 Linked to episodic and

emotional memory
 Linked to erotic
attraction
 Pheromones

Remember our neocortex

is an outgrowth of the
old olfactory lobes

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Olfaction: The Receptor Organ

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 (a) Olfactory nerve fibers respond to gaseous molecules. Receptor cells
are shown in cross section to the left. (b) Olfactory receptors are located
in the upper nasal cavity. 76
Receptors, through transduction, transform chemical reactions into nerve
impulses.
Smell or Olfaction

Steps for olfaction

Stimulus
 we smell volatile substances
Olfactory cells
Sensation and memories
Functions of olfaction
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Smell or Olfaction

Olfactory cells
 receptors for smell are located in 1-inch-square
patches of tissue in the uppermost part of the
nasal passages.
 olfactory cells are covered in mucus
 volatile molecules dissolve and stimulate the cells
 the cells trigger nerve impulses that travel to the
brain
 which interprets the impulses as different smells

78
Smell or Olfaction

Sensations and memories:

 nerve impulses travel to the olfactory bulb
 impulses are relayed to the primary olfactory cortex
 cortex
transforms nerve impulses into olfactory
sensations
 we can identify as many as 10,000 different odors
 westop smelling our deodorants or perfumes because of
decreased responding - called adaptation

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Smell or Olfaction

Functions of olfaction:
to intensify the taste of food
to warn of potentially
dangerous foods
elicitstrong memories;
emotional feelings

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Olfaction

 Defining parameters still unknown

 Not possible to predict smells of new
substances because (unlike colour or
sound) there are no clearly defining
parameters
 But the olfactory sense is still very
acute even in humans
 Nose can detect 5 p.p.m. of certain
odours (e.g., hydrogen sulphide)

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Olfaction

 Possible Biologically Determined

Preferences
 Apparently there are biologically
determined human preferences
 Some smells universally pleasing, some
universally displeasing, but many are just
individual preferences
 Seems there is a preference for ‘faintness’
(e.g., even skunk spray is pleasing if very
faint)
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 Gustation

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Taste

 Taste:
 Taste occurs because of the thousands of
receptors in the mouth
 The receptors are located primarily on the
tongue, but some are also found in the throat,
inside the cheeks, and on the roof of the
mouth
 Your tongue contains tiny bumps called
“Papillae” which are lined inside with “Taste
Buds” (500 to 10,000)

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Gustation: Receptor Organ

85
Gustation: Our Meager Four
Tastes
Most researchers
believe that there are
four basic tastes: salty,
sour, bitter, and sweet.

We are most sensitive

to bitter and least
sensitive to sweet.

Possible fifth taste

sensation; glutamate
(umami): brothy taste
(meaty-cheesy taste) 86
Caveat: Oversimplification
Taste

 Supertasters
 Some people are termed “supertasters” - they find
saccharin, caffeine, broccoli and many other substances
unpleasantly bitter
 Supertasters also perceive sweet tastes as sweeter and
salty tastes as saltier
 Supertasters may feel the heat from ginger, pepper and
peppers more than others

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Gustation: Supertasters

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Gustation or Taste

 Surface of the tongue

 chemicals, which are
the stimuli for taste,
break down into
molecules
 molecules mix with
saliva and run into
narrow trenches on the
surface of the tongue
 molecules then
stimulate the taste buds

89
Gustation or Taste

 Taste buds
 shaped like miniature
onions
 receptors for taste
 chemicals dissolved in
saliva activate taste buds
 produce nerve impulses
that reach areas of the
brain’s parietal lobe
 brain transforms impulses
into sensations of taste
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Gustation: The Dirty Secret

 The dirty secret:

Taste is…
 Smell
 Appearance
 Texture
 Even pain

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