SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

Discusses the ways in which our bodies transform sensory stimuli into signals which the brain uses to create sensations of vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Topics covered include defining sensation and perception, thresholds, signal-detection theory, preattentive vs. attentive processing, structure of the eye, visual pathways to the brain, structure of the ear, chemical senses and the olfactory bulb, pathways for pain signals, kinesthetic sense, Gestalt principles of perception, subliminal perception, distal vs. proximal stimuli, depth perception, optical illusions, "bottom-up" vs. "top-down" processing, ESP.