1. Five Senses? There are other senses of which we are unaware or are physiologically separate from the classic senses: Kinesthetic senses (motor sense) Proprioception Muscle stretch Subsets of Somatosensory Temperature Pain Pressure Vibration Vestibular sense Pheremonal reception? (vomeronasal organ in other animals)

2. Other animals have different senses that we do not experience: Some rodents can see ultraviolet light Sharks, eels and platypus can sense electrical changes in the environment Snakes sense infrared (heat) Bats and Dolphins echolocation Some birds may use magnetic energy for migration

3. Sensory Transduction Law of Specific ‘Nerve Energies’ (Transduction) (Muller, 1826) - Each sense has dedicated receptors and pathways within brain - Each sense is stimulated by specific physical events (e.g. light, air pressure changes)

4. The Visual Sense Light – consists of quanta (photons) that vibrate at a particular range in the electromagnetic spectrum

5. The psychophysics of vision The visual system breaks down the visual world based on three basic variables: 1.Form 2.Color 3.Motion

6. 1. Form Higher processing involving cortical centers (e.g. inferior temporal lobe damage results in prosopagnosia – the inability to recognize faces with preserved perception of facial features, see Fruit Face) Spatial frequency is primary determinant of form perception

7. Fruit Face

8. 2. Color Coded via wavelength of photons Consists of: Brightness – created by brain, a relative measure based on context Hue – subjective “color” Saturation – depth of color Blue colors are short wavelengths – Red is long wavelengths

9. 3. Motion Motion – range of perception is limited to the speed of relevant organisms; probably involves the convergence of cells coding spatial frequency and changes across spatial frequency

10. The Eye

11. The Retina

12. How do we see color? Trichromatic Theory vs. Opponent Process Theory Three cone types (with different light sensitive opsins) projecting to ‘opponent process’ ganglion cells.

14. How does information from your eye get to your brain?

15. Visual information is separated by color, form and motion in the brain

16. Audition What is sound? Air pressure changes (vibrations) of a certain frequency that are audible to an organism. Pressure changes can be varied in amplitude (loudness measured in decibels (dB)) or in frequency (pitch measured in Hertz (Hz)

17. The Psychophysics of sound In ideal circumstances, humans can hear within the range of 20-20,000 Hz The frequency range for human speech is 400-4000 Hz We tend to lose our ability to hear higher frequencies as we get older Other species can hear outside the range of human hearing

18. The anatomy of audition

19. Transduction occurs in the cochlea

20. Pitch is determined by the location of the basilar membrane most vibrated and the number of hair cells activated Place Theory Volley Theory

21. How does information get from your ear to your brain?

23. Which vehicle appears to be larger? Why?