Psych 205 Review

Qualities of Locke and Boyle

Primary – extension, shape, motion/rest, number, solidity
Secondary – color, tonality, warmth, taste, smell

Molyneux’s Paradox
The visive faculty takes no notice of its parts, but uses as an instrument only. The
brain doesn’t invert the image, it only uses it to sense the world.

Metaphors
Tenor – What we want to know
Vehicle – To understand it (like an analogy)

Mind-Body Problem
1. Dualism – Mind separate from brain
2. Behaviourism – There is no mind, and no free will
3. Central State Identity Theory – Neural states is neural percepts –
Assumptions: Our percepts are close enough to being the same
4. Functionalism – Percepts functionally the same – Different instantiations
gives same function – Issue: Neurons aren’t necessary (why not silicon?)

Gustaf Fechner
Elements of Psychophysics – beginnings of empirical psychology and
psychophysics

How do we measure?
1. Nominal: classifications (gender)
2. Ordinal Classifications with order
3. Interval: classify, order, and measured differences (Celsius, F)
4. Ratio: classify, order, measured diff, and has a true zero (kg, K, m, s)

Anisomorphism
Four cases:
Similar physical stimuli
1. Similar percept
2. Different percept
Different physical stimuli
3. Similar percept
4. Different percept

Broca-Sulzer effect
Testing brightness of light versus the duration of light. There is a peak
when it is the brightest, but afterwards, the brightness diminishes to a flat line
with increasing duration.
 Detection Thresholds
When there is not enough energy in the stimuli, all insufficient stimuli are
alike.

1. Method of Limits – Start above and below the threshold and

come to it and ask if the person detects it
2. Method of Adjustment – Ask the person to adjust until they can
just detect
3. Method of Constant Stimuli – Give a constant stimuli and ask if
it is detected (most common)

Definitions from Reading

Day 2

Psychophysics
The enterprise of relating physical stimulation to perceptual events.

Charles Bonnet Syndrome

Complex hallucinations that are received in individuals with visual impairments

Materialism
Perceptual experience depends on the operation of the nervous system, with no
requirements for the involvement of some noncorporeal force.

Naïve Realism
The view that what we know about the world is both unadulterated and
unexpurgated with respect to even its most subtle details. The world is always
exactly as it appears.

Subjective Realism
Physical world is entirely the product of the mind: mental fiction only.
Solipsism: only your mind exists, not the world.

Anton’s Syndrome
Complete blindness coupled with denial: brain makes up the percepts.

Day 3,4

Absolute Threshold
The stimulus intensity defining the transition between undetectable and
detectable.

Difference Threshold
 The minimum amount by which stimulus intensity must be changed in order to
produce a noticeable change in the sensation.

Intrinsic Light
Light that is percepted even in total darkness.

Criterion
Implicit rule that the observer uses to translate sensory information into overt
responses.

Day 5

Odor Constancy
Perceived strength of an odor remains constant despite sharp variations in flow
rate.

Nasal Cycle
Nostrils work in alternating shifts: one nostril is more engorged than that of the
other.

Olfactory Epithelium
Patch of tissue on the ceiling of nasal cavity (on the cribiform plate) that the
receptor cells sit on.

Olfactory Sensory Neuron

Bipolar nerve cell that captures odorant molecules and initiates the neural signals
for smell. One end has a single dendrite that terminates in tiny cilia. At the
opposite end, the nerve cell terminates in a single axon that, with other neighbor
axons, thread through one of the perforations in the ethmoid bone. Then form a
synapse with neurons in olfactory bulb. Unlike other receptors, these are
actually neurons, and do both the transducing and carrying of signals to brain.

Anosmia
The total loss of capability to smell. Specific anosmia restricts to a certain set of
smells. Absence of specific receptor proteins.

Olfactory Brain
Cluster of neural structures receiving projections from the olfactory bulb.

Pathway of Olfactory System

Nostrils  Baffles (Turbinate Bones)  Olfactory Sensory Neuron 
Olfactory Bulb  Olfactory Cortex  (NO Thalamus), Limbic System,
Orbito-frontal Cortex

Odor Detection
- Females are better at odor identification.
 - Odor detection is worse at old age and with people that smoke.
- It is easier to tell if two odors are different, but more difficult to
identify a specific odor
- Intensity of odor grows gradually in increasing concentration

Common Chemical Sense

Feeling that accompanies certain smell – menthol, ozone in mountain air

Odor Hallucinations
Experiencing odors when there are none: brain tumors, cold, flu…

Vomeronasal Organs
Embedded in the vomer bone, their signals bypass the olfactory bulb, may have
something to do with sexual arousal.

Day 6

Anatomy
Papillae, little bumps on your tongue, are lined with taste buds, which contain
the receptor cells.

Cross-fiber Theory
Taste quality is represented in the pattern of activity across a population of taste
fibers.

Pathway to brain
Taste buds  Nerve fiber (facial glossopharyngeal and vagus nerves) 
Thalamus  Frontal Operculum, Insula

Supertasters
People who have a high sensitivity to taste.

Adaptation/Modification
1. The taste of a substance may be weakened by prior exposure to that same
substance
2. The taste of a substance may be altered in quality by another subtance

Conditioned Taste Aversion

Extreme nausea after eating something will cause you to be conditioned to have
an aversion towards that food.

Sensory-Specific Satiety
Reduction in the pleasurable sensory quality of a particular food as it is being
eaten.
Day 7

Mechanoreceptors
Receptors sensitive to mechanical pressure on the skin.

Touch Acuity
Usually uses the two-point threshold test by using a compass to stimulate
neighboring regions on the skin, and seeing how close you can bring them
together to seem like they are only one point perceptually.

Localization Ability
When a stimulus is applied to the skin within an area with high touch acuity, the
location touched can be judged quite accurately.

Touch Fibers
Temporal Properties
Slowly Adapting Fibers – Responds when first touched and continues to
respond more or less constantly. (when stimulated electrically gives a light
sensation)

Rapidly Adapting Fibers – Gives brief, strong responses when a stimulus

is changed. (when stimulated electrically gives a buzzing sensation)

Spatial Properties
Punctate Fibers – small receptive fields with sharply defined boundaries.

Diffuse Fibers – Large receptive fields with ill-defined boundaries.

Touch Receptors (from nearest to skin to farthest)

Meissner Corpuscles
- Lies just below the surface of skin
- Responds best to transient stimulation (RA fibers)
- Encapsulated
- Responds to transient stimulation
Merkel Disks
- enervated by SA fibers
- Steady pressure of an object
Ruffini Endings
- Share single fibers
- SA fibers
- Active when fingers and joints move (sensitive to stretching of skin)
Pacinian Corpuscles
- Largest, least numerous, deepest
- RA fibers
- Spatially diffuse sensitivity
 Free nerve endings
These wrap around hair follicles so that slight bending of a hair will trigger neural
impulses

Pathways
Spinal Reflex Arc
Touch receptor  Sensory neuron  Interneuron (in spinal cord) 
motor neuron  muscle

Ascending Lemniscal Somatosensory pathway

Touch receptor  Spine (dermatones)  Brainstem nuclei  Medial
Lemniscus  Thalamus  Parietal lobe (somaosensory cortex)

Tactile Agnosia
Person can feel an object fine, but cannot identify it.

Homunculus
Caricature that proportions body parts to the area in represented in the
somatosensory cortex.

Day 8

Kinesthesis
Information about movement and position of our limbs.

Proprioception
Positional information about the different parts of our body.

Haptics
Sensory info that depends upon both touch and kinesthesis.

Unilateral Neglect
In this condition a patient may fail to attend to one side of the body.

Phantom Limb
Amputee has the compelling sense that an amputated limb is still attached to the
body.

Nociceptors
Found among the free nerve endings located near the surface of the skin as well as
within the subcutaneous fat below the skin’s surface, they get stimulated by
extreme pressures and temperatures.

Gate Control Theory of Pain

The idea that there are T cells and Gate cells that control the path that generates a
pain percept.
Day 9

Pinna
Shell-like flap gracing the side of your head.

Auditory Canal
Slightly bent tube approx. 2.5 cm long and 7mm in diameter. Resonant frequency
around 3kHz.

Eardrum (tympanic membrane)

Thin oval-shaped membrane that vibrates when sound pressure waves strike it.

Ossicles
3 bones that bridge the gap between the eardrum and the oval window. Consists
of the Hammer (malleus), Anvil (incus), and the Stirrup (stapes). It is attached to
the Oval Window.

Eustachian Tube
Connects the middle ear and the throat to maintain equivalent air pressures.

Acoustic Reflex
The tensor tympani, a small muscle attached to the eardrum, and the stapedius,
attached to the stapes, contract to stiffen the eardrum, thus dampening the sound
vibrations.

Cochlea
- A coiled, fluid-filled cavity containing the audio receptors.
- Has three chambers
(1) Vestibular canal
(2) Cochlear duct
(3) Tympanic canal
- The basilar membrane separates the tympanic and cochlear duct
- Organ of Corti – the receptor organ where neural impulses are
generated in response to vibrations passing through the fluid
environment of the inner ear.
- Tectorial Membrane – an awninglike membrane that arches over the
hairs in the organ of corti
- Inner Hair Cells – situated on the basilar membrane close to where
the tectorial membraine is attached; makes most of the contact with the
auditory nerve
- Outer Hair Cells – line up anywhere from three to five rows; only
make sparse contact with the auditory nerve

Temporal Theory
 Proposes that the temporal structure defining sound is represented in temporal
fluctuations in firing rates of auditory nerve fivers.

Place Theory
Says that different frequencies of vibration of the cochlear fluid disturb different
regions of the basilar membrane. There is a traveling wave that goes down the
cochlear, and where it reaches the peak represents the frequency of the sound
heard.

Tono-topic organization
The orderly layout of frequency over the length of the basilar membrane.

Cochlear Emissions
This is when the cochlear actually generates sounds.

Tinnitus
When people experience a sort of humming or ringing sound coming from within
their ears.

Neural pathway
Cochlear  Auditory Nerve  Cochlear nucleus  Superior olivary nucleus 
inferior colliculus  Medial Geniculate Nucleus  Auditory Cortex

Threshold Intensity
The threshold for an auditory fiber where anything lower would not be heard.

Frequency Tuning Curve

Describes the relationship between frequency and intensity thresholds.

Binaural Cues
Cues that help the binaural system of hearing locate a sound. Interaural time
differences tests for delays between the two sounds coming in. Interaural
Intensity Difference tests for intensity differences between the two sounds.

Sound Shadow
A weakening of the intensity of sound at the more distant ear.

Day 10

Conduction Loss
Stems from some disorder within the outer or middle ear,, typically involve an
overall reduction in sensitivity to sounds of all frequencies.

Sensory/Neural Loss
Originates within the inner ear or in the auditory portion of the brain. May extend
to only a portion of the frequency range.

Otosclerosis
Gradual immobilization of the stapes.

Bone Conduction
When sound travels through the skull and vibrates the cochlear in that fashion.

Presbycusis
The gradual loss of sensitivity to high frequencies.

Temporary Threshold Shift

Transitory reduction in hearing sensitivity following noise exposure.

Cochlear Implant
Seris of tiny electrodes that are surgically implanted in the cochlea itself and used
to activate auditory nerve fibers directly.

Masking
Whenever some background noise makes it more difficult for you to hear a weak
sound.

Timbre
The unique harmonic patterns that an instrument has.

Interaural Intensity Difference

Intensity varies with the azimuth of a sound source.

Interaural Time Difference

The difference in time arrival of a sound to the individual ears.

Cone of Confusion
For any given IID or IIT, there is a family of potential spatial locations which
could generate that interaural difference, and these points of ambiguity lie on a
cone.

Duplex Theory
Listeners use one source of information (IIT) to localize low frequency sounds
and a different source of info (IID) to localize high frequency sounds.

Cocktail Party Effect

The skill of being able to easily attend to one sound from among many in a noisy
environment.

Phenome
 The distinctive features in speech. A sound that can produce a change in meaning
in an utterance.

Spectrogram
Graph showing the amount of acoustic energy at various frequencies.

McGruk Effect
The influence of vision on the percepted speech phenomes.

Phonagnosia
Deficits in voice perception. Understands what is being said, but cannot identify
the speaker.

Language-Based Learning Impairment

Experience difficulty distinguishing two brief tones occurring close temporal
proximity, and have problems segregating tone signals from noise even when the
tone and noise are presented successively in time.

Day 11

Extraocular Muscles
6 muscles for each eye that swivel the eye in its sockets

Rectus Muscles
The extraocular muscles that run straight back from the eye.

Conjunctive
When both eyes move in the same direction.

Vergence
When eyes move in opposite directions.

Orbit
A bony depression in the skull.

3 Layers of Eye
Fibrous Tunic
- Protects the eyeball
- Also called the sclera
- The cornea is the small bulge in the front of the eye that is transparent
Vascular Tunic
- Consists mostly of a heavily pigmented spongy structure called the
choroid
- Reduces Scattering
- Towards the front of the eye, becomes parallel and is called the ciliary
body, which produces aqueous humor
 - From out of the ciliary body comes the iris, the circular section of
tissue that gives color.
Retina

Pupil
Opening with two sets of muscles that can make the pupil larger or smaller.
Depth of Field
The range of sharp vision that varies inversely with the size of the pupil.

Crystalline Lens
Lies right behind the iris.

Accommodation
Variation in optical power from varying the flatness of the lens.

Sclerosis
The old fibers in the lens become more densely packed, and hardens the lens.

Cataract
Opacity of the lens.

Vitreous
A transparent fluid that fills the Vitreous Chamber

Retina
Innermost layer of the eye, contains the photoreceptors, collector cells (bipolar,
amacrine, and horizontal), and retina ganglion cells.

Macula
The most acute vision is centered here, and is the nearly circular area in the center
of retina.

Pigment Epithelium
The outermost sheath of the retina, a single layer of cells. Transfers oxygen,
nourishment, and vitamins from the choroidal circulation to the photoreceptors.

Myopic
Near sighted.

Hyperopic
Far sighted.

Emmetropic
Normal sighted.
Fovea
The region in the center of the macula that is thinner than its neighboring areas.