Sensation and Perception

By Jessie Kiekhoefer

What is Sensation?Sensation is the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.

When we use sensation, were are using Five different senses. We can use them at one at a time or all them at the same time.

WHAT ARE THE FIVE Senses

The Five Senses Are:HearingSmellTastesTouchSeeing

Hearing

HearingWhen we hear sounds, we are really hearing sound waves

traveling through the air to our ears. The sound waves are called pressure waves. The waves enter through the outer most part of your ear called the pinna. Then it travels down the auditory canal to the ear drums. When they hit the ear drum, the sound waves will vibrate and then travel to the three small bones in your ear. The Hammer, Anvil, and Stirrup jobs are to take the vibrations and concentrate them to the fluid-filled Cochlea. In the cochlea there are tiny hairs that will “catch” the waves and transmit the information to the brain. Some people are born with hearing loss and deafness. Hearing losses is caused by loud noises and old age, while deafness can be from birth. Death people main communication is sign language, but something that technology is now coming up with is cochlear implants.

Seeing

Seeing Light enters through the cornea, protecting the eye and blends light to provide

focus. The light will then pass thought a small adjustable opening. This opening is called a pupil. The pupil is responsible for regulating the amount of light that gets to go into the eye. Around the pupil is a colored muscle called the iris. The iris can adjust light intake by dilating and constructing in response to light intensity or even our moods can affect the iris. Behind the pupil is the lens. The lens helps us focus incoming rays into a n image on the eye’s light-sensitive back surface. The light sensitive surface is called the retina. In the retina, the light will reflect off rods and cones. The rods and cones will convert the light energy into neural impulses, then be sent to the optic nerve. The optic nerve will then bring the image to the brain.

When the info gets to the brain it will go to individual neurons called feature detectors. The feature detectors will take that info and put it into a “info pool”, where it will be sorted analyzed by high-level brain cells. The way we interoperate stuff can affect the way our brain will process info. For example, if we see something at the wrong depth, will make you see it the right way. This process is called parallel processing. there are two different types of eye sight: nearsighted and farsighted.

TasteHow/ why we taste different things.

TasteTaste has four sensation: Sweet, Sour, Salty, and Bitter. On your tongue, you have more than 200 taste buds that

are manly on the sides and tip of your tongue. Taste buds contain a pour that catches food chemicals. When you burn you mouth, you are killing you taste buds and it will take seven to fourteen days for them to reproduce again. As you grow older, you tend to lose your sense of taste. You can lose your taste buds in many different ways other that old age, like, smoking and drinking alcohol. When you taste something you are tasting it with one of your other sense, the smell. The aroma of the food will go up and you smell it. This is called the sensory interaction.

Touch

Touch We do a lot with touch with out this sense wouldn’t get to

experience everyday things like texture and pain. At one given time you wouldn’t know what you are feeling with out pressure, warmth, cold and pain. With each of these you can find different things like tickles and what hurts and is hot/ cold. Pain is your bodies way of telling you that something has gone wrong. It makes you focus your attention to what is wrong (burning, a break). But what is really pain, pain is actually how the brain is affected by it and also where the pain comes from. This is called phantom limb sensations. With this the brain will get the idea that something is wrong but don’t know what…that’s where the “pain” spot comes from. Pain is not located in one certain area like the other sense’s, but its from a sensing device to a definable area in the brain. With that there is no special receptors that can read what is going on, unlike the eye that has rods and cone. Although there is no “place” for pain, Melzack and Wall believe that the spinal cord is full of tiny nerve fibers that conduct whether the pain signals can pass or be blocked from going to the brain. This is called gate-control theory.

Smell

SmellEach day you inhale and exhale nearly 20,000 times. With this

you work/ influence your other senses to work in a different way, like the smell of something can persuade you to eat something you like compared to something you don’t. When we smell something we are really smelling molecules of a substance carried in the air to the top of your nasal cavity, to about five million receptor cells. The amount that you breath in is instantly sent to your brain through the axon fibers. An aroma cannot be separated into more elemental orders. This way they have to go through the olfaction system. The olfaction system takes the sent and recognizes each scent individually. When an scent is smelled, the odors can trigger a combination of receptor, that will activate the olfactory cortex interprets odors have the ability to evoke memories and feelings that we experience. This info is sent to the limbic system that is associated with memory and emotion.

What is Perception?Perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recongnization meaningful objects and events.