Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Sound Intensity Level00:53

Sound Intensity Level

Humans perceive sound by hearing. The human ear helps sound waves reach the brain, which then interprets the waves and creates the perception of hearing. The loudness of the environment in which a person is located determines whether they can distinguish between different sound sources.
The human ear can perceive an extensive range of sound intensity, necessitating the use of the logarithmic scale to define a physical quantity—the intensity level. It is a ratio of two intensities and hence a...
Sensation01:21

Sensation

Sensory receptors are specialized neurons that respond to specific types of external stimuli, initiating the process known as sensation. This occurs when sensory input, such as light entering the eye, is detected by these receptors, causing chemical changes in the cells of the retina. These cells then convert the sensory stimulus into action potentials that are transmitted to the central nervous system, a process termed transduction.
Absolute thresholds can quantify the sensitivity of sensory...
Hearing01:31

Hearing

When we hear a sound, our nervous system is detecting sound waves—pressure waves of mechanical energy traveling through a medium. The frequency of the wave is perceived as pitch, while the amplitude is perceived as loudness.
Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System01:11

Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

The somatosensory system is the central and peripheral nervous system component that senses and processes touch, pressure, pain, temperature, and body position or proprioception. The process of sensation takes place at three levels:
The receptor level:
The receptor level is the first stage of sensation. It involves the detection of a stimulus by specialized sensory receptors. The stimulus must arrive within the receptor's receptive field. Next, the receptor converts the energy of the stimulus...
Perception01:28

Perception

Perception is a fundamental psychological process that enables individuals to organize, interpret, and consciously experience sensory information. This process is crucial for understanding and interacting with the world around us. It includes both bottom-up and top-down processing, each playing a distinct role in how we perceive our environment.
Bottom-up processing begins at the sensory level, where receptors detect external environmental stimuli. These could include the tactile sensation of...
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location01:21

Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location

The human brain perceives pitch through two primary mechanisms reflected in place theory and frequency theory. Each mechanism describes how sound waves are interpreted as specific pitches by the brain, offering insights into the intricate processes of auditory perception.
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by identifying...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Probing the Underlying Mechanisms of Spectro-Temporal Modulation Discrimination.

Trends in hearing·2026
Same author

Perceptual Processes as Charting Operators.

Neural computation·2026
Same author

Reverse correlation of natural statistics for ecologically relevant characterization of human perceptual templates.

Journal of neurophysiology·2025
Same author

State-dependent dynamics of cuttlefish mantle activity.

The Journal of experimental biology·2024
Same author

Human sensory adaptation to the ecological structure of environmental statistics.

Journal of vision·2024
Same author

Deep networks may capture biological behavior for shallow, but not deep, empirical characterizations.

Neural networks : the official journal of the International Neural Network Society·2022
Same journal

Mind wandering during first- and foreign-language reading.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

Lexical word processing is unaffected by rapid invisible frequency tagging in reading: Evidence from eye movements.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

Anxiety modulates voluntary attentional orienting to emotional gaze cues: Eye movements for pro- and anti-saccades.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

Faster key-press responses to front vowels than back vowels when matching heard vowels with represented vowels.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

Testing the interleaving effect without response bias: A forced-choice reevaluation of Kornell and Bjork (2008).

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
Same journal

The impact of social interaction on abstract concepts.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026
See all related articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 5, 2026

A Low Cost Setup for Behavioral Audiometry in Rodents
09:23

A Low Cost Setup for Behavioral Audiometry in Rodents

Published on: October 16, 2012

How inherently noisy is human sensory processing?

Peter Neri1

  • 1University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland. peter.neri@abdn.ac.uk

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|December 21, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

The human brain has significant internal noise, which is variability in responses not caused by the stimulus itself. This study quantizes this neural noise, finding it generally larger than previously estimated.

More Related Videos

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
09:13

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Published on: April 22, 2015

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
06:34

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 5, 2026

A Low Cost Setup for Behavioral Audiometry in Rodents
09:23

A Low Cost Setup for Behavioral Audiometry in Rodents

Published on: October 16, 2012

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
09:13

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Published on: April 22, 2015

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
06:34

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychophysics

Background:

  • The human brain, like any information processor, exhibits inherent noise.
  • Response variability in sensory tasks can quantify internal neural noise, distinct from stimulus noise.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To quantify the magnitude of internally generated neural noise in human sensory processing.
  • To provide a more robust estimate of internal noise using diverse experimental conditions.

Main Methods:

  • Collected over 400 independent estimates of internal noise from 40 participants.
  • Utilized a wide range of sensory protocols (e.g., yes/no, forced-choice), modalities (auditory, visual), and stimulus parameters.
  • Varied attentional and adaptation states to assess their influence on internal noise.

Main Results:

  • The estimated internal noise level is approximately 1.3 (in units of external noise standard deviation).
  • This estimate is generally larger than those derived from previous, less comprehensive studies.
  • Internal noise levels were assessed across diverse experimental conditions.

Conclusions:

  • Human sensory processing is characterized by substantial internal neural noise.
  • The findings have implications for understanding the limitations and capabilities of sensory perception.
  • Accurate quantification of internal noise is crucial for experimental and computational neuroscience models.