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Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

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...

Variance

Variance

The deviations show how spread out the data are about the mean. A positive deviation occurs when the data value exceeds the mean, whereas a negative deviation occurs when the data value is less than the mean. If the deviations are added, the sum is always zero. So one cannot simply add the deviations to get the data spread. By squaring the deviations, the numbers are made positive; thus, their sum will also be positive.The standard deviation measures the spread in the same units as the data.

Factors Affecting Perception

Factors Affecting Perception

Perception is influenced by perceptual set, context, motivation, and emotion. Perceptual set, or perceptual expectancy, refers to the tendency to perceive things in a particular way, influenced by previous experiences and expectations. This phenomenon affects the interpretation of stimuli, creating a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that impact sensory perceptions of sound, taste, touch, and sight.
An illustrative example of a perceptual set is the scenario where an airline pilot told...

Somatosensation

Somatosensation

The somatosensory system relays sensory information from the skin, mucous membranes, limbs, and joints. Somatosensation is more familiarly known as the sense of touch. A typical somatosensory pathway includes three types of long neurons: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary neurons have cell bodies located near the spinal cord in groups of neurons called dorsal root ganglia. The sensory neurons of ganglia innervate designated areas of skin called dermatomes.

Perceptual Constancy

Perceptual Constancy

Perceptual constancy is the ability to recognize that objects remain consistent and unchanged even when their appearance varies due to changes in sensory input. There are four main types of perceptual constancy: size constancy, shape constancy, color constancy, and brightness constancy.
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt principles provide a framework for understanding how humans perceive objects as unified wholes within their context. These principles are essential in explaining the cognitive processes that make sense of complex visual stimuli by organizing them into coherent groups. One fundamental principle is proximity, which posits that objects located close to each other are perceived as a collective group. For instance, when dots are positioned near one another, the visual system interprets them...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 20, 2026

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

Published on: January 23, 2017

Variance predicts salience in central sensory processing.

Ann M Hermundstad¹, John J Briguglio¹, Mary M Conte²

¹Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States.

|November 15, 2014

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Sensory systems efficiently process information by adapting to natural stimuli. This study shows visual cortex sensitivity for complex features is predicted by natural image statistics, suggesting efficient coding applies centrally.

Keywords:

human natural scene statistics neural coding neuroscience normative theories visual cortex

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Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity

Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity

Published on: March 18, 2019

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Computational Neuroscience
Visual Processing

Background:

Sensory information processing is influenced by natural stimulus statistics.
Efficient coding in the sensory periphery involves compressing wide-ranging signals due to transmission bottlenecks.
A different efficient coding regime suggests allocating more resources to variable, informative features when sampling is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if efficient coding principles apply to central sensory processing, specifically in the visual cortex.
To determine if visual sensitivity for complex features can be predicted by natural image statistics.
To explore efficient coding in a regime where performance is limited by sampling.

Main Methods:

Utilized central visual processing as a model system.
Analyzed local multi-point spatial correlations in visual stimuli.
Quantitatively predicted visual sensitivity based on the statistical structure of natural images.

Main Results:

Visual sensitivity for complex spatial correlations was quantitatively predicted by natural image statistics.
Demonstrated that efficient coding principles extend to higher-order sensory features in the central visual system.
Observed that sensitivity increases with feature variability in this central processing regime.

Conclusions:

Efficient coding applies centrally in the visual cortex, not just the periphery.
Natural image statistics are crucial for predicting visual sensitivity to complex features.
Central sensory processing operates under a regime where feature variability enhances sensitivity.