Sensation and Perception
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138 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 the 2 types of neurotransmitters | excitatory and inhibitory |
| excitatory neurotransmitters | increase the likelihood of an action potential |
| inhibitory neurotransmitters | decrease the likelihood of an action potential |
| When does an action potential occur? | when the number of excitatory neurotransmitters is larger than the number of inhibitory neurotransmitters, then the neurotransmitters are at a critical level, and an action potential will occur |
| agonist | mimics/intensifies action of a neurotransmitter |
| antogonist | opposes/blocks action of a neurotransmitter |
| Acetylcholine (Ach) | enables every muscle action-voluntary and involuntary, important for learning and memory |
| botulism | targets the lungs, comes from poor packaging, blocks action of acetylcholine |
| dopamine | enables voluntary movement, pleasurable emotions include from food, water,sex |
| parkinsons disease | antagonist of dopamine |
| schizophrenia | agonist of dopamine |
| seratonin | regulates sleep/eating/mood, lower for people with depression |
| Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) | agonist for serotonin |
| norepinephrine | controls alertness/arousal/mood, stimulates central nervous system |
| substance P | sends pain messages, vomiting center of the brain |
| GABA (Gamma Amino Butyric Acid) | inhibitory neurotransmitters involved in 40% of all synapses, prevents over stimulation of Nervous system -regulates anxiety, affected by alcohol (agonist) |
| endorphins | alleviate pain, produce pleasurable emotions, resemble opiates in structure and function |
| glutamate | excitatory neurotransmitters involved in memory |
| brain stem | medulla, pons,reticular formation |
| medulla | breathing and heart rate |
| pons | balance, coordination, sleep and dreams |
| reticular formation | attention, arousal, filtering oncoming stimuli during both consciousness and unconsciousness |
| thalamus | relay station for the senses except for smell-senses come here first then are sent to various areas of brain |
| cerebellum | balance and coordination, muscle memory, affected by alcohol |
| limbic system | hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus |
| hypothalamus | controls endocrine system-produces hormones, maintaining homeostasis (inner balance-hot/sweat, cold/shiver) four f's : fight, flight, fornicate, feeding |
| amygdala | fear and aggression, strong emotions |
| hippocampus | memory and learning, short term and new memories |
| Cerebral Cortex (cerebum) | frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobe |
| frontal lobe | decision making, planning, filters emotions, personalities, made up of motor cortex and Broca's area |
| motor cortex | all voluntary muscles |
| brocca's area | speech production |
| parietal lobe | sensory information processing, made up of sensory cortex and angular gyrus |
| sensory cortex | skin senses, touch, temp, pain, pressure |
| angular gyrus | transfer visual information into auditory code |
| occipital lobe | visual center of the body, has visual cortex |
| visual cortex | receives stimuli from optic nerve |
| temporal lobe | hearing, sound, made of auditory cortex, Wernicke's area |
| auditory complex | processes sound |
| wernicke's area | speech communication |
| throughout cerebral cortex | association areas and corpus collosum |
| association area | integrating information, learning and memory |
| corpus collosum | connects left and right hemisphere of th brain |
| cerebral lateralization | left side of brain, right side of brain |
| left side of brain | logic, math, language, right side of body/visual field |
| right side of brain | spatial, emotional expressions, music/art appreciation, left side of body/visual field |
| the neuron | basic building blocks of nervous system transmit electrochemical messages |
| glial cells | glue that holds cells together |
| sensory neurons (afferent) | carry messages from sense organs to spinal cord and brain |
| motor neurons (efferent) | neurons that carry outgoing information from the central nervous system to the muscles and glands |
| interneurons | Central nervous system neurons that internally communicate and intervene between the sensory inputs and motor outputs |
| dentrites | receives messages |
| axon | transmits electrical messages |
| synapse | the junction between two neurons (axon-to-dendrite) or between a neuron and a muscle |
| myelin sheath | a layer of myelin encasing (and insulating) the axons of medullated nerve fibers |
| soma | cell body |
| terminal buttons | Small knobs at the end of axons that secrete chemicals called neurotransmitters |
| vesicles | small membrane sacs that specialize in moving products into, out of, and within a cell |
| reuptake channels | When the neurotransmitters are absorbed and recycled |
| nervous system | peripheral and central |
| central nervous system | brain and spinal chord |
| peripheral nervous system | autonomic and somatic |
| autonomic | controls self regulated action of internal organs and glands |
| somatic | controls voluntary movement of skeletal muscles |
| part of autonomic | sympathetic (arousing) and parasympathetic (calming) |
| endocrine system | the system of glands that produce endocrine secretions that help to control bodily metabolic activity |
| pituitary glands | the endocrin system's highly influential "master gland" that, in conjunction with the brain, controls the other endocrine glands |
| neuro imaging techniques | EEG, CT, PET scan, MRI, fMRI |
| EEG | a graphical record of electrical activity of the brain |
| CT | a method of examining body organs by scanning them with X rays and using a computer to construct a series of cross-sectional scans along a single axis |
| PET scan | a visual display of brain activity that detects where a radioactive form of glucose goes while the brain performs a given task. |
| MRI | magnetic resonance imaging |
| fMRI | a form of magnetic resonance imaging of the brain that registers blood flow to functioning areas of the brain |
| somatosensory cortex | a brain area at the front of the parietal lobes that registers and processes body sensations |
| stroke | flow of blood blocked by a clot or ruptured vessels kills brain tissue |
| effects of stroke | speech problems, unilateral paralysis, loss of coordination |
| concussion | momentary loss of consciousness, severe or repeated can lead to memory and attention deficits, slurred speech |
| traumatic brain injury | major blow to the head, mild impairment-death, changes mood and personality |
| tumors and lesions | changes vary by location |
| cerebral commisurotomy | split brain surgery |
| hemispherectomies | remove a hemisphere |
| brain plasticity | ability of the brain to adapt and reorganize itself |
| nature vs. nurture | name for a controversy in which it is debated whether genetics or environment is responsible for driving behavior |
| heritablity | the extent to which variation among individuals can attribute to thier different genes. |
| natural selection and adaptation | a natural process resulting in the evolution of organisms best adapted to the environment |
| evolutionary psychology | the study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection |
| sensation | stimulation of sense receptors that produces a neural impulse (transduction) |
| perception | selection, organization, and interpretation of information into something meaningful |
| psychophysics | study of how physical stimuli are translated into psychological experiences |
| Gustav Fechner | pioneer of psychophysic |
| stimulus | energy that produces a response in a sense organ, varies in both type and intensity |
| thresholds | dividing points between energy levels of stimulus that do not have a detectable effect |
| absolute threshold | the smallest amount of stimulus that must be presented in order to be detected 50% of the time |
| Just Noticeable Difference | the smallest difference in the amount of stimulation that a specific sense can detect |
| Weber's Law | the JND is a s constant proportion of the intensity of an initial stimulus |
| sensory adaptation | gradual decline in sensitivity to prolonged stimulation. nerve cells fire less frequently, allows us to notice threats to safety or changes to environment |
| selective attention | focus our awareness to a limited aspect of experience |
| cocktail party effect | selectively attend to one voice among many |
| change blindness | a form of selective attention that fails to notice changes in aspects of the environment |
| subliminal perception | messages that occur outside our conscious awareness-below absolute threshold |
| inattentional change blindness | inability to perceive things in plain sight |
| visual light spectrum | humans see from 400 nm to 700 nm in electro magnetic spectrum |
| stroop effect | brain goes toward letters over colors |
| trichromatic theory of color vision | eyes have three types of color receptors: red, green, blue-violet cones which respond to different wavelengths of light and combine to form 7 million colors |
| monochromatic colorblindness | no color receptors-very rare |
| dichromatic color blindness | lack of function of red or green cones |
| opponent process theory | three pairs of opposing receptors: red/green, blue/yellow, black/white. After images produces opponent colors following over stimulation and fatigue |
| place theory | links pitch with part of basilar membrane that is stimulated |
| frequency theory | brain responds to neural pulses (speed of neuro transmission) |
| frequency | pitch (high frequency waves- high frequency pitch) |
| decibels | loudness, measured in amplitude of waves |
| conductive hearing loss | eardrum damage, ossicle damage |
| nerve deafness (hearing loss) | damage to haircells from over exposure, hereditary response to old age |
| vestibular sense | balance, the sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance |
| cochlea | the snail-shaped tube (in the inner ear coiled around the modiolus) where sound vibrations are converted into nerve impulses by the Organ of Corti |
| semicircular canals | three canals within the inner ear that contain specialized receptor cells that generate nerve impulses with body movement |
| perceptual set | our readiness to perceive stimulus in a particular way |
| rods and cones | specialized sensory receptors found in the eyes |
| retina | the light-sensitive membrane covering the back wall of the eyeball |
| fovea | area consisting of a small depression in the retina containing cones and where vision is most acute |
| blind spot | the point where the optic nerve enters the retina |
| feature analysis | start with components of form-lines, edges, corners and build them into perceptions |
| bottoms-up processing | brain pieces together bits and pieces of information into a meaningful whole |
| top-down processing | begin with expectation, recognize whole patterns before analyzing component parts |
| backmasking | supposed hidden messages musicians recorded backward in their music |
| Gestalt Principles of Perceptual Organization | Perception is often influenced by context: figure ground ,proximity, closure, similarity, continuity |
| depth perception | how the retina takes a 2d object and interprets it as 3d |
| Binocular depth cues | retinal display, convergence |
| retinal display | differences in 2 retinal images allow the brain to judge distance |
| convergence | turning eyes inward on nearby objects shows depth |
| monocular depth cues | relative size, interposition, relative clarity, texture gradient, linear perspective., shadowing, height on a plane |
| perceptual consistency | perception of distal objects remains accurate and stable despite large variations in proximal stimulus : shape, size and color/brightness constancy |
| optical illusion | when receptors are based on inappropriate assumptions or inability to correctly interpret space, size and shape |
| Muller Lyer illusion | occurs because we rely on size cues from previous experience with corners and rooms |
| poggendorf illusion | interruption of visual field |
| ebbinghaus illusion | illustrates importance of context |
| ponzo illusion | linear monocular cues make the top bar appear longer |
| impossible figures | fool the brain into creating an impression based on certain features, they don't make sense when viewed as a whole |
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