Neurological basis of behaviour

OUTLINE
• Neuron
• parts of brain
STRUCTURE OF NEURON
 What is a neuron?
• fundamental unit of the brain
• responsible for receiving sensory input from the external world
• sends motor commands to our muscles, and for transforming and relaying the
electrical signals at every step in between.
• For the muscles to produce the complex movements that make up any meaningful
physical activity, the brain has to provide the right messages to them and
coordinate those messages. Such messages—as well as those that enable us to
think, remember, and experience emotion—are passed through specialized cells
called neurons.
 Brain

Hind
Fore brain Mid Brain
Brain
Lobes of brain
Sensation and Perception
 Lecture outline
• Sensation
• Mechanism of sensation
• Types of sensation
• Sensory receptors and theories
• Absolute threshold, JND, sensory adaptation
SENSATION ATTENTION PERCEPTION
 Sensation
• The activation of the sense organs by a source of physical energy.
• ‘A simple process in which sense organs, in response to stimuli, collect
information about the world with the help of the nervous system.’
 Explanation
• Every sense organ consists of a delicate and complicated system.
• Basic unit of every sense organ: Stimulus.
• Stimulus: Energy that produces a response in a sense organ.
 CONT…
• Each sense organ has its own specific stimulus.
⮚ Light waves acts as a stimulus for (Eye).
⮚ Sound waves (Ears).
⮚ Smell (Nose)
⮚ Taste (Tongue)
⮚ Skin senses for pressure, temperature, pain (Touch)
Parts of Brain Stimulated by Senses
 Mechanism
• Receptors are located at the extreme
external end of the sense organs. These
receptors are stimulated after receiving
a specific stimulus and pass on
message to the brain by generating
electro-chemical neural impulses and
then carry back the message from there
to various parts of the body. Thus, they
in collaboration with the nervous
system carry out external and internal
functions.
(Stimulus)
 VISUAL AUDITORY
SENSATION: SENSE SENSATION: SENSE

Types of OF SIGHT OF HEARING

Sensation

OLFACTORY GUSTATION: SENSE

SENSATION: SENSE OF TASTE
OF SMELL
 Senses
Olfaction (sense of Gustation (sense of
Vision (sense of sight) Auditory (sense of smell) stimulates our taste)Ψ Tactile (skin
sensitive to LIGHT hearing) stimulated by nostrils by senses for pressure,
ENERGY SOUND ENERGY CHEMICAL temperature, pain)
ENERGY THERMAL ENERGY

Organic (sensation
Kinesthesia (sense of
Vestibular (sense of from internal organs
posture and
balance) such as hunger, thirst,
movement)
drowsiness
 Difference b/w Photo-receptors
RODS CONES

Straight and rod shaped Cone- shaped

Responsible for vision in low light Responsible for vision in bright light and
conditions and Dark Adaptation. Colour vision.

Loss of rod cells causes night blindness. Loss of cone cells causes legal blindness
 Explanation

⮚ Dark Adaptation is the process by which our eyes adjust to darkness after being
exposed to light. For example, when we move from a bright, sunny area outside to a

relatively dark room inside, it is difficult to see at first. But gradually our eyes recover

and become more sensitive to the dim light indoors.

⮚ Colour Vision is the ability of the eye to discriminate between colors excited by light of
different wavelengths.
 Theories of color vision
• Trichromatic Theory of color vision, which was first proposed by Thomas
Young and extended by Hermann von Helmholtz in the first half of the
1800s. This theory suggests that there are three kinds of cones in the retina,
each of which responds primarily to a specific range of wavelengths. One is
most responsive to blue-violet colors, one to green, and the third to yellow-
red (Brown & Wald, 1964).
• Perception of color is influenced by the relative strength with which each of
the three kinds of cones is activated. If we see a blue sky, the blue-violet
cones are primarily triggered, and the others show less activity.
• According to the opponent-process theory of color vision, first proposed
by German physiologist Ewald Hering in the 19th century, receptor cells
are linked in pairs, working in opposition to each other. Specifically, there
are a blue-yellow pairing, a red-green pairing, and a black-white pairing.
 Sensing Sound

• Sound: movement of air molecules brought about by a source

of vibration
 Physical aspect of sound
• Sound waves require a medium (air, water etc) to travel
• Frequency: no. of wave cycles that occur in a sec
• Low frequency & high frequency
• Low f are translated into a sound of low in pitch
• Pitch makes sound seem “high” or “low”
• Low f that humans are capable of hearing is 20 hz
• Higher f are sound of higher pitch
• People can detect 20,000 hz
Amplitude:
• allow us to distinguish b/w loud & soft sounds
• Spread b/w up-&-down peaks

• Waves with small peaks: soft sound & vice versa

• We are capable of hearing 120 db. sound
• Sensitivity to different f changes with age
 Taste
• Sense of taste (gustation) involves
receptor cells respond to 4 basic stimulus
qualities sweet, sour, salty, bitter
• 5th category a flavor called umami
(savory)
• Every taste is simply a combination of
basic flavor
 The Skin Senses: Touch, Pressure,
Temperature, & Pain
• Skin senses: senses of touch, pressure , temperature & pain
play a critical role in survival, making us aware of potential
danger

• If you never experienced pain, you might not notice that your arm had
brushed against a hot pan, & you would suffer a severe burn
• Without warning sign of abdominal pain, typically accompanies an
inflamed appendix, that might eventually rupture, spreading a fatal
infection throughout body
 Pain
• Most of these senses work through various receptor cells located at various depths through out
skin, distributed unevenly throughout the body
• E.g; fingertips – more receptor cells sensitive to touch

• Pain:
• most extensive – Pain is outcome of cell injury
• When cell damage, releases chemical called “substance p” that transmits pain message to brain
• people consult physicians & take medication for pain
• It is a response to great variety of stimulus
• E.g; too bright light , too loud sound– pain
• Some people are more susceptible to pain than others e.g; women
• These gender differences are due to hormones and genetic
• Pain is a perceptual response that depends heavily on emotions & thoughts
Gate control theory of pain:
• Particular nerve receptors in spinal cord lead to specific areas of brain related to pain
• When these receptors are activated due to injury, a “gate” to brain open, allowing us to
experience sensation of pain
• Gate can be shut in 2 different ways
• 1st: rubbing the skin around an injury
• 2nd: psychological factors (emotions, interpretation of events)

• Cultural differences in experience of pain

 How Our Senses Interact
• Synesthesia :
• exposure to one sensation (sound) evokes the other (vision)

• Multimodal perception:
• brain collect info from individual sensory system & integrates & coordinates it
Absolute threshold, JND, sensory adaptation
• absolute threshold: The smallest intensity of a stimulus that must be present for the stimulus to be detected.
• difference threshold (just noticeable difference):The smallest level of added or reduced stimulation
required to sense that a change in stimulation has occurred.
• Adaptation is an adjustment in sensory capacity after prolonged exposure to unchanging stimuli.
Adaptation occurs as people become accustomed to a stimulus and change their frame of reference. In a
sense, our brain mentally turns down the volume of the stimulation that it’s experiencing (Carbon & Ditye,
2011; Erb et al., 2013).
• example of adaptation is the decrease in sensitivity that occurs after repeated exposure to a strong stimulus.
If you were to hear a loud tone over and over, eventually it would begin to sound softer. Similarly, although
jumping into a cold lake may be temporarily unpleasant, eventually you probably will get used to the
temperature.
Perception
 Outline
• Perception
• Components of perception
• Perceptual process
• Top down and bottom up processing
• Perceptual organization
 Perception

• Perception—the process of selecting,

identifying, organizing and interpreting
sensory input into a useful and meaningful
mental representations of the world in the light
of relevant memories from past experiences
• Perception of the same senses may vary from
one person to another because each person’s
brain interprets stimuli differently based on
that individual’s learning, memory, emotions,
and expectations.
 Components of perception
According to Alan Saks and Gary Johns, there are three components to perception:
• The Perceiver: a person whose awareness is focused on the stimulus, and thus begins to perceive it. There are
many factors that may influence the perceptions of the perceiver, while the three major ones include (1)
motivational state, (2) emotional state, and (3) experience.. Oftentimes, the perceiver may employ what is called a
"perceptual defense," where the person will only "see what they want to see"—i.e., they will only perceives what
they want to perceive even though the stimulus acts on his or her senses.
• The Target: the object of perception; something or someone who is being perceived. The amount of information
gathered by the sensory organs of the perceiver affects the interpretation and understanding about the target.
• The Situation: the environmental factors, timing, and degree of stimulation that affect the process of perception.
These factors may render a single stimulus to be left as merely a stimulus, not a percept that is subject for brain
interpretation
 Step 1 :Selection
• The first step in perception is selection—choosing where to direct our attention.
• We do not perceive everything at once—we select certain objects to perceive while ignoring others.
• Attention—is the direction of perception toward certain selected objects.
• Attention is selective—we focus on specific and important aspects of experience while ignoring others.
• Attention is shiftable—we may focus from one specific object to another.
• Failure to notice something that is completely visible because of a lack of attention is called inattentional
blindness
• we often don’t perceive stimuli that remain relatively constant over prolonged periods of time. This is
known as sensory adaptation
• Saccades - constant movement of the eyes, tiny little vibrations called that people do not notice
consciously; prevents sensory adaptation to visual stimuli
Step 2: Organize
• Having selected incoming
information, we organize it into
patterns and principles that will
help us understand the world.
Step 3: interpret
• After selectively sorting through
incoming sensory information
and organizing it into patterns,
the brain uses this information to
explain and make judgments
about the external world. This is
the final stage of perception—
interpretation.
 Top down and bottom up processing
• Perception involves both bottom-
up and top-down processing.
• In top-down processing,
perception is guided by higher-
level knowledge, experience,
expectations, and motivations.
• Bottom-up processing:
Perception that consists of the
progression of recognizing and
processing information from
individual components of a
stimuli and moving to the
perception of the whole.
• https://
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GESTALT THEORIES OF PERCEPTION
Figure and ground
• Figure-ground perception refers to the tendency of the visual system to
simplify a scene into the main object we are looking at (the figure) and
everything else that forms the background (or ground).]
GESTALT LAWS OF ORGANIZATION:
• A series of principles that describe how we organize bits and pieces of
information into meaningful wholes.
• When given a cluster of sensations, people tend to organize them into a gestalt,
a German word meaning a “form” or a “whole.”
• For example, Note the individual elements of this figure, called a Necker cube
• Gestalt psychologists demonstrated many principles we use to organize our
sensations into perceptions
 GROUPING
• Having discriminated figure from ground, we must also organize the figure into a
meaningful form
• Our minds bring order and form to stimuli by following certain rules for grouping.
• Proximity We group nearby figures together.

• Continuity We perceive smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones.

 Cont…..

• Closure We fill in gaps to create a complete,

whole object.

• Similarity Elements that are similar in appearance

we perceive as grouped together

• Figure and ground: distinguishing figure from

the base or the ground.

• Simplicity : When we observe a pattern, we

perceive it in the most basic, straightforward
manner that we can.
 Depth Perception
• The ability to view the world in three dimensions and to perceive distance.
• depth perception—is due largely to the fact that we have two eyes.
Because there is a certain distance between the eyes, a slightly different
image reaches each retina. The brain integrates the two images into one
view, but it also recognizes the difference in images and uses this
difference to estimate the distance of an object from us. The difference in
the images seen by the left eye and the right eye is known as binocular
disparity (Kara & Boyd, 2009; Gillam, Palmisano, & Govan, 2011;
Valsecchi et al., 2013).
 Monocular cues
• Motion parallex
• Relative size
• Texture gradient
• Linear perspective
 Perceptual constancy
• Perceptual constancy is the recognition that physical objects are unvarying and
consistent even though our sensory input about them varies.
• Perceptual constancy allows us to view objects as having an unchanging size,
shape, color, and brightness, even if the image on our retina changes.
• For example, despite the varying size or shape of the images on the retina as an
airplane approaches, flies overhead, and then disappears, we do not perceive the
airplane as changing shape or size.
• Experience has taught us that the plane’s size remains constant (Redding, 2002;
Wickelgren, 2004; Garrigan & Kellman, 2008).
 Factors Influencing Perception

• Perceptual set (perceptual expectancy) - the

tendency to perceive things a certain way
because previous experiences or expectations
influence those perceptions.
 The factors which affects perceptual mechanism are of
three kinds:

1. Characteristics of the 2. Characteristics of the Perceived or target

Perceiver (i) Size

(ii) Intensity
(i) Needs & Motives
(iii) Frequency
(ii) Self Concept (iv) Status

(v) Contrast
(iii) Beliefs
iv) Past Experience 3. Characteristic of the Situation
(i) Physical setting

(v) Current Psychological State (ii) Social setting

(iii) Organizational setting

 Errors in Perception
• These techniques are frequently valuable-they allow us to make
accurate perceptions rapidly and provide valid data for making
projections. But sometimes it also creates problems.
•These are the shortcuts in perception
•In these ways, we can judge others in a short period of time but
sometimes we mistakenly judge others by these shortcuts.
•Perception is the process of analyzing and understanding a
stimulus as it is but it may not be always possible to perceive the
stimuli as they are.
•Knowingly or unknowingly, we mistake the stimulus and perceive it
wrongly.
 1. Illusion.
2. Hallucination.
3. Halo Effect.

Errors in 4. Stereotyping.
perception 5. Similarity.
6. Horn Effect.
7. Contrast.
 Parapsychology:
the study of ESP, ghosts, and other subjects that do not
normally fall into the realm of ordinary psychology.

Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

- claim of perception that occurs Telepathy - claimed ability to
without the use of normal sensory read another person’s thoughts, or
channels such as sight, hearing, mind reading.
touch, taste, or smell.

Precognition - supposed ability to

Clairvoyance - supposed ability
know something in advance of its
to “see” things that are not
occurrence or to predict a future
actually present.
event
• Visual illusions: Physical stimuli that consistently produce errors in
perception.
• For example Muller-Lyer illusion
Curved or straight lines?