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Related Concept Videos

Perception

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...

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...

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.

Introduction to Special Senses

Introduction to Special Senses

Sensory receptors play an integral part in comprehending our external and internal environments. They receive diverse stimuli, converting them into the nervous system's electrochemical signals. This conversion occurs as the stimulus alters the sensory neuron's cell membrane potential, instigating the generation of an action potential. This action potential is subsequently transmitted to the central nervous system (CNS), which integrates with other sensory data or higher cognitive...

The Vestibular System

The Vestibular System

The vestibular system is a set of inner ear structures that provide a sense of balance and spatial orientation. This system is comprised of structures within the labyrinth of the inner ear, including the cochlea and two otolith organs—the utricle and saccule. The labyrinth also contains three semicircular canals—superior, posterior, and horizontal—that are oriented on different planes.

What is a Sensory System?

What is a Sensory System?

Sensory systems detect stimuli—such as light and sound waves—and transduce them into neural signals that can be interpreted by the nervous system. In addition to external stimuli detected by the senses, some sensory systems detect internal stimuli—such as the proprioceptors in muscles and tendons that send feedback about limb position.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 29, 2025

Visualizing Visual Adaptation

Visualizing Visual Adaptation

Published on: April 24, 2017

Flexible information representation to stabilize sensory perception despite minor external input variations.

¹International Research Center for Neurointelligence, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.

Neuroscience Research

|May 26, 2023

Summary

Repeatedly viewing stimuli enhances the brain

Keywords:

Contrast Information representation Orientation discrimination Sensory cortex Stable perception Visual cortex

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Published on: April 24, 2017

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Visual Perception

Background:

Sensory information is variable, yet perception remains stable.
The brain must overcome external changes for consistent recognition.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how experience stabilizes visual perception.
To explore neuronal mechanisms underlying stable perception of low-contrast stimuli.

Main Methods:

Repeatedly presenting oriented grating stimuli to subjects.
Recording neuronal activity in the primary visual cortex.
Analyzing neuronal responses to varying luminance contrast.

Main Results:

Experience with stimuli increased low-contrast-preferring neurons.
Neuronal populations represented low-contrast orientations after experience.
Experience induced flexible information representation in the primary visual cortex.

Conclusions:

Experience shapes sensory cortex representations for stable perception.
Both faithful and experience-distorted representations may contribute to stable perception.