Sensation and Perception

Sensation: your window to the world

Perception: interpreting what comes in
your window.
Sensations and Perceptions

 Sensations - the passive process of

bringing information from the
outside world into the body and to
the brain.
 Perception - the active process of
selecting, organizing, and interpreting
the information brought to the brain
by the senses
What is Sensation?
 A stimulus can be measured in
a variety of ways including it’s
size, duration, intensity, or
wavelength.
 A Sensation occurs anytime a
stimulus activates one of your
receptors.
 The sense organs then detect
any change in energy, such as
light, heat, sound, and physical
pressure.
What is Sensation?
 Sensation occurs when special receptors in
the sense organs—the eyes, ears, nose, skin,
and taste buds—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 systems
 Transduction - Communication between the brain
& the rest of the body occurs via neuron.
Information goes from the senses to the thalamus,
then to the various areas in the brain.
 All senses involve something called receptor
cells. Their job is to transduce (transform or
even “translate”) physical stimulation/physical
energy from the environment into
electrochemical messages that can be understood
by the brain.
Psychophysics
 This explains how sensation and
perception are related
 Psychophysics: The study of the
relationships between sensory experiences
and the physical stimuli that cause them!
So where do vision and hearing
(& the other senses) happen?
 The Brain!
 The physical energy in
the environment is
detected by the eyes,
ears, etc. but we can’t
see, hear, etc. until the
brain interprets them—
i.e., makes sense of
them. So in a way,
we see, hear, smell, etc.
in our brains!
Principles of sensation

• Absolute threshold
• Signal detection theory
• Subliminal
• Difference threshold
• Weber’s law
• Sensory adaptation
Absolute Threshold
 The Absolute Threshold is the level of
stimulus that produces a positive response of
detection 50% of the time.
 the lowest level of stimulation that a person
can consciously detect 50 percent of the time
the stimulation is present.
The Absolute Thresholds for the “5” senses in
humans are the following:
 1. Vision: Seeing a candle flame 30 miles away
on a clear night.
 2. Hearing: Hearing a watch ticking 20 feet
away.
 3. Taste: Tasting 1 teaspoon of sugar dissolved
into 2 gallons of water.
 4. Smell: Smelling one drop of perfume in a 3
room house.
 5. Touch: Feeling a bee’s wing falling a
distance of one centimeter onto your cheek.
Signal detection theory

 Signal detection theory is a method of differentiating a

person's ability to discriminate the presence and absence of a
stimulus (or different stimulus intensities) from the criterion
the person uses to make responses to those stimuli.
Subliminal stimuli

Subliminal stimulation is sensory stimulation that is

below a person's threshold for perception. It can't be
seen by the naked eye or consciously heard. 
 Weber’s law of just noticeable
differences (jnd, or the difference
threshold).
• The difference threshold is the amount of
change needed for us to recognize that
a change has occurred.
• It’s the smallest difference between two
stimuli that is detectable 50 percent of the
time
• Weber's Law states that “The larger or
stronger the stimulus, the larger the
change required for a person to notice that
anything has happened to it.”
Sensory
Adaptation
 Adaptation (sometimes called habituation) is a part of
everyday experience. It’s a decreased responsiveness to
stimuli due to constant stimulation.
We are able to respond to the changes in our
 environment because our senses have the ability to
adapt, or adjust themselves, to a constant level of
stimulation.
Once your senses get used to a new level of a
 stimulation, they respond only to deviations from it.
Examples of Adaptation
 1. Your eyes eventually adjust to a
darkened movie theatre. At first you
see blackness, but eventually, you can see
what is going on around you.

 2. When you first jump into a pool that

“feels cold” your body reacts to the
stimulus. Eventually, your body adapts
to the sensation and you become
“comfortable.”

 3. When you first walk into a sports

locker room, the smell is almost
nauseating. After a while, your senses
adjust and you can hardly tell.
 SESSION- II

SENSORY SYSTEM
1. Visual Sensation
• Our most dominating sense.
• Parts:- cornea, iris, retina, optic nerve and
pupil.
• Stimulated by various wavelengths of
light.
• The different wavelengths are responsible
for the diversity of colors we see.
• Light is electromagnetic radiation that
travels in the form of waves. Light is
emitted from the sun, stars, fire, and
lightbulbs.
The Human Eye
 Sensory Receptor Cells
• There are two types of sensory receptor
cells which are located on the retina
– Rods
– Cones
• Rods enable us to see black and white, are
more sensitive to light, and there are 100
million in each eye
• Cones enable us to see color, they work
best in bright light, there are 6.5 million in
each eye and they are located mostly at
the center of the eye
 Sensory Receptor Cells
• These cells transform light energy into
neural impulses that are sent to various
areas in the brain through the bundle
of neurons called the optic nerve.
• What is the place called in which the optic
nerve leaves the eye?
– The blind spot
• Why is it called “the blind spot”?
– Because there are no rods & cones on this area
(there are neurons instead), images that fall
on this area of the retina are not “seen”!
2. Auditory/Hearing Sensation
 Hearing
• Hearing depends on vibrations in the air
called sound waves.
• Sound waves from the air pass through
various bones until they reach the inner
ear, which contains tiny hair like cells that
move back and forth.
• These hair cells change sound vibrations
into neuronal signals that travel
through the auditory nerve to the
brain.
 Transduction in the ear
Sound waves hit the eardrum then anvil then
hammer then stirrup then oval window.
Everything is just vibrating. Then the cochlea
vibrates.
The cochlea is lined with mucus called basilar
membrane.
In basilar membrane there are hair cells.
When hair cells vibrate they turn vibrations into
neural impulses which are called organ of Corti.
Sent then to thalamus up auditory

It is all about the vibrations!!!

nerve.
Auditory defects =Deafness
• There are 2 types of deafness:
– 1. Conduction Deafness: occurs when
anything hinders physical motion through the
outer or middle ear or when the bones of
the middle ear become rigid and cannot
carry sounds inward. (Can be
helped with a conventional hearing aid.)
– 2. Sensorineural Deafness: Occurs
from damage to the Cochlea, the hair cells,
or the auditory neurons. (Complete
Sensorineural deafness cannot be helped by
a hearing aid.)
Olfactory/Smelling Sensation
 Olfactory/Smelling
Sensation
• Smell depends on sensory receptors that respond
to airborne chemicals.
• In humans, these chemoreceptors are located
in the olfactory epithelium.
• The olfactory epithelium is made up of three
kinds of cells:
-sensory neurons each with a primary cilium
supporting cells between them
-basal cells that divide regularly producing a fresh
crop of sensory neurons to replace those that
die
 Disorders of olfaction:

• Anosmia – inability to smell

• Cacosmia – things smell like feces
• Dysosmia – things smell different than they
should
• Hyperosmia – an abnormally acute sense of
smell.
• Hyposmia – decreased ability to smell
• Olfactory Reference Syndrome – psychological
disorder which causes the patient to imagine he
or she has strong body odor
• Parosmia – things smell worse than they should
• Phantosmia – "hallucinated smell," often
unpleasant in nature
 Gustatory/Taste Sensation
• Gustation - The sensation of
taste
– We have bumps on our tongue called
papillae.
– Taste buds are located on the
papillae (they are actually all over
the mouth).
Taste Sensation
 Gustatory/Taste Sensation
• Five basic tastes
– Sweet
– Sour
– Salty
– Bitter
– Umami (amino acids and
nucleotides)
 Sense of touch/Cutaneous or skin
sensation
• Skin - The largest organ of your
body
• Our sense of touch is controlled by
a huge network of nerve endings
and touch receptors in the skin
known as the somatosensory
system.
• This system is responsible for all
the sensations we feel - cold, hot,
smooth, rough, pressure, tickle,
itch, pain, vibrations, and more.
 Sensory functions
• Factual experiences
– pressure and pain

• Thermal experiences
– warmth and cold
Pain
• Pain receptors are probably the most important for
your safety because they can protect you by
warning your brain that your body is hurt!
• 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