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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...

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.

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...

Auditory Perception

Auditory Perception

The auditory system is essential for sound perception, utilizing various critical structures. When sound waves enter the outer ear, they travel through the ear canal and cause the eardrum to vibrate. These vibrations are then transmitted to the middle ear, where three tiny bones – the malleus, incus, and stapes – amplify the sound. This amplification is crucial, as it ensures that the sound vibrations are strong enough to be conveyed to the inner ear. These vibrations then reach the...

Parallel Processing

Parallel Processing

The brain processes sensory information rapidly due to parallel processing, which involves sending data across multiple neural pathways at the same time. This method allows the brain to manage various sensory qualities, such as shapes, colors, movements, and locations, all concurrently. For instance, when observing a forest landscape, the brain simultaneously processes the movement of leaves, the shapes of trees, the depth between them, and the various shades of green. This enables a quick and...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 3, 2025

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Published on: April 22, 2015

Sensory perception is a holistic inference process.

Jiang Mao¹, Alan A Stocker¹

¹Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania.

Psychological Review

|February 15, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Perception is a holistic inference process, not just feature-based. This new model explains sensory perception and categorical effects across various domains, improving prediction accuracy.

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Last Updated: Jul 3, 2025

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Published on: April 22, 2015

Cross-Modal Multivariate Pattern Analysis

Cross-Modal Multivariate Pattern Analysis

Published on: November 9, 2011

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning

Published on: November 2, 2012

Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Psychophysics
Computational Neuroscience

Background:

Sensory perception is traditionally viewed as an inference process based on uncertain sensory data.
This view often focuses on inferring specific stimulus features.
A reductionist approach may overlook broader representational levels.

Purpose of the Study:

To challenge the reductionist view of sensory perception.
To propose and test a holistic inference model of perception.
To investigate how perception operates across representational hierarchies.

Main Methods:

Utilized a psychophysical matching task (method-of-adjustment).
Introduced a novel holistic matching model.
Validated the model against existing datasets and compared it to previous models.

Main Results:

The holistic model accurately predicts subject response behavior.
The model outperforms previous models both qualitatively and quantitatively.
The model generalizes to different feature domains, including categorical color perception.

Conclusions:

Sensory perception is a holistic inference process operating across representational levels.
Categorical effects in perception are ubiquitous and explained by optimal behavior.
Holistic sensory representations provide a parsimonious explanation for perceptual phenomena.