Somesthesis om/watch?v=qoiaUV7 fGEI

Top-Down Processing Information guided by mental processes –Starts in the brain –Construct perceptions through prior experience and expectation

Bottom-up Processing Begins with sensory information –Works up to brain’s integration of sensory information

What type of processor are you?

Processing Examples: I go to the doctor’s office to get shots. I hate getting shots. This is the worst. I’m going to have the worst time ever. Why do we have to do this today. My parents tricked me – they said we were going to Wendy’s and hotdamn, I love that place… but no this is not Wendy’s, we have to first stop off and get these shots, this is the worst I hate it I hate it I hate it… I get the shot, and I was right, it is the worst thing ever. It hurts. Ow Ow Ow Ow. –Top-down or bottom-up? I go to the doctor’s office to get a shot. The doctor sticks me. Ow. It sucks. This is the worst ever. –Top-down or bottom-up?

Touch is an important sense… Communication Love Attachment development

But it’s not as easy as having a cone or a rod, or a taste bud… There are 4 types of touch, but only pressure has an identifiable receptor site. 1.Pressure 2.Warmth 3.Cold 4.Pain –Why not hot?

PRESSURE has its own receptors - 0ther skin sensations are just combos of the other four (pressure, pain, cold, warm) Stroking alternating pressure = tickle –You can’t tickle yourself… the brain understands foreign vs. domestic terrorism Repeated gentle stroking of pain = itching Touching cold and pressure = wet –think of touching really cold and dry metal Stimulating cold and warm = hot But what could hot also be? Top-down or bottom-up? - Rubber Hand Illusion (which two senses are at play here, and what’s this called?)

Somesthesis Fancy word for touch sense HUMUNCULUS –Motor and sensory cortex together Where are they located in the brain? Broken down into two parts –Kinesthesis –Vestibular sense

Kinethesis Sense of position and movement of body parts –Enabled by receptors in your joints, tendons, bones, ears, and skin

Monitors your head’s (and thus body’s) position and movement –Based off equilibrium in inner ear –Semicircular canals contain vestibular sacs which connect to the cochlea Vestibular Sense

Pain Your body’s way of saying something has gone wrong. Combines bottom-up and top-down –How? Think of examples from beginning of class…

In case you need it: The Pain Circuit Sensory receptors (nociceptors) respond to potentially damaging stimuli Send impulse to the spinal cord Passes the message to the brain Interprets the signal as pain

Gate Control Theory Draw it out! –Nociceptors –Endorphins –Distracted stimulation and control –Selective attention Pain meds and the Placebo Effect: hgughttp:// hgug

Phantom Limb Mirror box solution/experiment –

Pain and Biopsychosocial Approach What’s the conclusion to how pain is managed? What’s the nature of it, what’s the nurture of it? –What’s the bio? –What’s the psycho? –What’s the social?