Psychology
Body Senses
Body senses refer to the various sensory systems in the body that provide information about the external environment and the body's internal state. These include the somatosensory system, which processes touch, temperature, and pain, as well as the vestibular and proprioceptive systems, which contribute to our sense of balance and body position. These senses play a crucial role in our perception and interaction with the world.
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10 Key excerpts on "Body Senses"
eBook - PDF- Nancy Ogden, Michael Boyes, Evelyn Field, Ronald Comer, Elizabeth Gould(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Each system con- sists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and areas of the brain involved in sensory perception. Aristotle was the first to claim that there are five senses: smell, taste, touch, sound, and sight. However, beyond these five senses we can also consider our kinesthetic sense, which bottom-up processing percep- tion that proceeds by transducing environmental stimuli into neural impulses that move into succes- sively more complex brain regions. top-down processing percep- tion processes led by cognitive processes, such as memory or expectations. perceptual set readiness to interpret a certain stimulus in a certain way. FIGURE 5.3 Old or young? What you see when you look at this drawing depends in part on what you expect to see. RADIOLOGIE P.BROUSSE-GARO/Phanie/Alamy Stock Photo A critical difference A radiologist carefully examines a brain scan looking for minute changes in the images. An individual’s ability to detect a difference between two visual stimuli (such as normal versus abnormal tissue) can be increased by special training, practice, and instruments, but it is still limited to some degree by sensory difference thresholds. 172 CHAPTER 5 Sensation and Perception gives us information about the body’s movement, posture, and position. As well, the vestibular sense gives us information about the head’s position and movement in space, stabilizing gaze as well as maintaining balance and posture. Together, these two senses, as well as other senses (particularly the visual system), combine to provide proprioceptive feedback, sometimes con- sidered the body’s sixth sense. Proprioceptive feedback is the unconscious awareness of the self and spatial orientation arising from stimulation within the body.
- Lorelle J. Burton, Drew Westen, Robin M. Kowalski(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
MAKING CONNECTIONS Experimental data show that hypnosis can be extremely helpful to burn victims, whose bandages must be con- stantly removed and replaced to avoid infection — a pro- cess so painful that the strongest narcotics can often barely numb the pain (Patterson et al., 1992; see also Hoffman et al., 2004; chapter 8). INTERIM SUMMARY Touch includes three senses: pressure, temperature and pain. Sensory neurons synapse with spinal interneurons that stimulate motor neurons (producing refexes) as well as with neurons that carry information up the spinal cord to the medulla. From there, nerve tracts cross over, and the information is conveyed through the thalamus to the somatosensory cortex, which contains a map of the body. The function of pain is to prevent tissue damage; the expe- rience of pain is greatly affected by beliefs, expectations, emotional state and personality. Proprioceptive senses Aside from the five traditional senses — vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch — two additional senses, called proprioceptive senses, register body position and movement. The first, the vestibular sense, provides information about the position of the body in space by sensing gravity and movement. The ability to sense gravity is a very early evolutionary development found in nearly all animals. The existence of this sense again exemplifies the way psychological characteristics have evolved to match characteristics of the environment that impact on adaptation. Gravity affects movement, so humans and other animals have receptors to transduce it, just as they have receptors for light. The vestibular sense organs are in the inner ear, above the cochlea (see figure 7.17). Two organs transduce vestibular information: the semicircular canals and the vestibular sacs. The semicircular canals sense acceleration or deceleration in any direction as the head moves. The vestibular sacs sense gravity and the position of the head in space.
- Stanislav Stanković(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Springer(Publisher)
is list originates from ancient Greece. It was first presented by Aristotle in his book under the title of Perì Psūchês, or On the Soul. is list reflects the understanding of human anatomy and physiology available to ancient people. However, the scientific research conducted in centuries that followed revealed that the human body is actually equipped with a much larger variety of senses. Some of the very impor- tant sensory mechanisms have been overlooked by this simplistic classification, most importantly, our vestibular apparatus responsible to our sense of balance or equilibrium. Furthermore, what is usually considered a single sense of touch, also known as haptic sense, is actually a diverse group of distinct sensory organs [35]. In addition to senses that provide information about its envi- ronment, the human body has a variety of systems aimed at monitoring its own internal state. Proprioception is one of the senses from this group that has special importance in the field of human computer interaction. 36 3. LECTURE 3–HUMAN SENSES 3.3 PURPOSE OF SENSES Sensory organs present in a particular animal are a result of the evolution of each particular species. In order to survive and eventually reproduce, all creatures must respond to several imperatives: find food, avoid becoming somebody else’s food, avoid dangerous environments, find and attract a mate, etc. In order to do so, some species make use of information about their environment. e existence of sensory organs that gather information about the environment and nervous system to transmit and process this information is closely tied to the ability of organisms to move [38]. It is worth noting that organisms do not need to have any of these mechanisms to survive. Many organisms, such as autotrophic plants and fungi indeed thrive without them. e set of sensory systems present in the human body is a direct result of our evolution as a species.
eBook - PDFSensation, Perception and Action
An Evolutionary Perspective
- Johannes Zanker(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
1 OVERVIEW The somatic sensory system includes a group of senses that we are usually completely unaware of, because they are not organised around prominent organs like the eye or the ear, and because they are, to a large extent, dealing with information about the internal state of the body (interoception) rather than being exclusively directed at the external world (exteroception). Despite being hidden, somatosensory perception is of great impor-tance for maintaining the physical control and integrity of the body. You might want to know, for instance, where your left foot is at the moment, and whether the chair under-neath your back does support your weight. The proprioceptive and the vestibular sense will be introduced as systems to monitor and maintain static and dynamic stability in space. Temperature and pain sensitivity are considered as archetypical alarm systems that keep humans out of danger and prevent or minimise damage. The focus in this chapter will be on touch, with a more obvious exteroceptive, wide-ranging and everyday significance for navigation in darkness, exploration of objects in the close environment, and social communication. Starting from the physics of ‘tactile’ stimuli and the biological design of sensors, we will look at the basic and more advanced mechanisms of encoding and higher-level processing of tactile information in the nervous system. We will revisit fundamental processing concepts that we know from other sensory modalities such as receptive fields, adaptation or active exploration. The comparatively low spatial resolution of touch is con-sidered with respect to how it varies in different regions of the body surface. The existence of a somatosensory map, the homunculus, is introduced as another instance of topographic cortical representation, together with the plasticity of remapping observed during growth and after loss of parts of the body, leading to ‘phantom limbs’.
eBook - PDF- Craig Freudenrich, Gerard J. Tortora(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
sensationCon- scious or subcon- scious awareness of changes in internal or external environment; can occur in all parts of the CNS. perceptionCon- scious awareness and interpretation of sen- sations; occurs only in the cerebral cortex. that detect a change in the body’s internal or external environment. Each receptor is specific to a par- ticular type of sensation. When a receptor is stimulated, it initiates a signal in the associat- ed dendrite, which conducts impulses related to the sensation to the central nervous system (CNS). Somatic sensations include tactile, pain, temperature, and proprioception. Recep- tors for the somatic senses are spread diffusely around the body in structures such as the skin, mucous membranes, muscles, tendons, and joints (Figure 8.1a). Visceral senses have receptors within the walls of the internal organs that detect pain and Somatic Senses Are Related to Detection of Pressure, Chemicals, Proprioception, and Touch 229 Smell Sight Taste c. Special senses Hearing and balance Epidermis Dermis Merkel (tactile) disc senses touch near surface. Meissner corpuscle senses touch near surface. Pacinian corpuscle senses pressure rapidly. Ruffini corpuscle senses stretching in deep layers of skin. Hair root plexus senses movement of the hair. Subcutaneous layer Nociceptors are free nerve endings that sense pain rapidly. Other free nerve endings sense tickle, temperature, itch, and some touch sensations. Somatic sensations are sensed by many types of receptors in the skin • Figure 8.2 changes in blood pressure and chemical levels (Fig- ure 8.1b). Like somatic senses, visceral senses have receptors that are spread throughout the organs of the body. In contrast, the special senses, such as smell, sight, hearing, balance, and taste, have receptors that are localized in the nose, eyes, ears, and mouth (Fig- ure 8.1c).
eBook - PDF- Karen R. Huffman, Catherine A. Sanderson(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Psychologists are keenly interested in our senses because they are our mind’s win- dow to the outside world. We’re equally interested in how our mind perceives and interprets the information it receives from the senses. Sensation begins with specialized receptor cells located in our sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, and internal body tissues). When sense organs detect an appropriate stimulus (light, mechanical pressure, chemical molecules), they con- vert it into neural impulses (action potentials) that are transmitted to our brain. Through the process of perception , the brain then assigns meaning to this sensory information (Table 4.1). Processing Our eyes, ears, skin, and other sense organs all contain special cells called receptors, which receive and process sensory information from the environment. For each sense, these specialized cells respond to a distinct stimulus, such as sound waves or odor molecules. Next, during the process of transduction , the receptors convert the energy from the specific sensory stimulus into neural impulses, which are sent to the brain. For example, in hearing, tiny receptor cells in the inner ear convert mechanical vibra- tions from sound waves into electrochemical signals. Neurons then carry these signals to the brain, where specific sensory receptors detect and interpret the information. How does our brain differentiate between sensations, such as sounds and smells? Through a process known as coding , the brain interprets different physical LEARNING OBJECTIVES Sensation The process of detecting, convert- ing, and transmitting raw sensory information from the external and internal environments to the brain. Perception The processes of selecting, orga- nizing, and interpreting sensory information into meaningful patterns; interpreting sensory images as having been produced by stimuli from the external, three-dimensional world.
eBook - PDF- Siri Carpenter, Karen Huffman(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
The skin senses reflect the fact that our skin is sensitive to touch (pressure), temperature, and pain The Body Senses • Figure 4.10 The Body Senses tell the brain what it touches and is touched by, how the body is moving, and how the body is oriented. movement of individual body parts. Kinesthetic receptors are found throughout the muscles, joints, and tendons of the body. They tell the brain which muscles are being contracted or relaxed, how our body weight is distributed, where our arms and legs are in relation to the rest of our body, and so on ( Figure 4.10c ). We have more skin receptors for cold than for warmth, and we don’t seem to have any “hot” receptors at all. Instead, our cold receptors detect not only coolness but also extreme temperatures—both hot and cold (Craig & Bushnell, 1994). The vestibular sense is responsible for balance—it in-forms the brain of how the body, and particularly the head, is oriented with respect to gravity and three-dimensional space. When the head moves, liquid in the semicircular ca-nals , located in the inner ear, moves and bends hair cell receptors. At the end of the semicircular canals are the vestibular sacs , which contain hair cells sensitive to the spe-cific angle of the head—straight up and down or tilted. In-formation from the semicircular canals and the vestibular sacs is converted to neural impulses that are then carried to the appropriate section of the brain ( Figure 4.10b ). Kinesthesis is the sense that provides the brain with information about bodily posture, orientation, and 1. Why are our senses of smell and taste called the chemical senses? 2. How are taste and smell important to our survival? 3. How do the vestibular and kinesthetic senses differ? Understanding Perception LEARNING OBJECTIVES e are ready to move from sensation and the major senses to perception, the pro-cess of selecting, organizing, and interpret-ing incoming sensations into useful mental representations of the world.
eBook - PDF- Micah M. Murray, Mark T. Wallace(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
467 24 Multisensory Perception and Bodily Self-Consciousness From Out-of-Body to Inside-Body Experience Jane E. Aspell, Bigna Lenggenhager, and Olaf Blanke 24.1 INTRODUCTION The most basic foundations of the self arguably lie in those brain systems that represent the body (Blanke and Metzinger 2009; Damasio 2000; Gallagher 2005; Jeannerod 2006; Knoblich 2002; Metzinger et al. 2007). The representation of the body is complex, involving the encoding and inte-gration of a wide range of multisensory (somatosensory, visual, auditory, vestibular, visceral) and motor signals (Damasio 2000; Gallagher 2005; Metzinger 2003). One’s own body is thus possibly the most multisensory “object” in the world. Importantly, whereas external objects of perception come and go, multisensory bodily inputs are continuously present, and have thus been proposed as the basis for bodily self-consciousness—the nonconceptual and prereflective representation of body-related information (Gallagher 2000; Haggard et al. 2003; Jeannerod 2007; Metzinger et al. 2007; Pacherie 2008). Despite the apparent unitary, global character of bodily self-consciousness, experimental manip-ulations have mainly focused on subglobal aspects, such as the sense of ownership and agency for one’s hand and its movements (Botvinick and Cohen 1998; Ehrsson et al. 2004; Jeannerod 2006, 2007; Knoblich 2002; Pavani et al. 2000; Tsakiris and Haggard 2005; Tsakiris et al. 2007). These latter studies on body-part representation are important (and will be discussed below in detail), yet we have argued (e.g., see Blanke and Metzinger 2009) that they fail to account for a key feature of bodily self-consciousness: its global character. This is because a fundamental aspect of bodily self-consciousness is its association with a single, whole body, not with multiple body parts (Blanke and Metzinger 2009; Carruthers 2008; Lenggenhager et al. 2007; Metzinger et al. 2007).
eBook - PDFDiscovering Psychology
The Science of Mind
- John Cacioppo, Laura Freberg(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
You might think it would be a blessing to be born without a sense of pain, but people who have impaired pain reception often die prematurely because of their in-ability to respond to injury. Although unpleasant, pain tells us to stop and assess our circum-stances, which may have promoted the survival of our ancestors. Somatosensory Stimuli Unlike the visual and auditory stimuli we have discussed so far in this chapter, somatosensory stimuli arise from within the body or make contact with its surface. As a result, these stimuli provide an organism little time to react. We can deal with a predator seen or heard from a distance using strategies different from those we use for one that is touching us. Nonetheless, the somatosenses provide essential feedback needed for movement, speech, and safety. The Biology of the Somatosenses The transition from walking on four legs to walking on two placed selective pressure on the evolution of primate vision and, to some extent, audition. By standing up on two legs, primates distanced themselves from many sources of information, like smell. If you don’t believe us, try getting down on your hands and knees and smelling your carpet. This transition did not place the same evolutionary pressure on the human somatosenses, which work about the same way in us as they do in other animals. Body Position To begin our exploration of the somatosensory systems, we return to the inner ear. Adjacent to the structures re-sponsible for encoding sound, we find the sensory structures of the vestibular system , which provide us with information about body position and movement. The proximity of these structures to the middle ear, which can become congested because of a head cold, is often responsible for those rather unpleasant feelings of dizziness that accompany an illness. The receptors of the vestibular system provide information about the position of the head relative to the ground, linear acceleration, and rotational movements of the head.
eBook - PDFHealth Psychology
A Critical Introduction
- Antonia C. Lyons, Kerry Chamberlain(Authors)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Much of this work is based within a cognitive-perceptual framework, which has been given a lot of attention within health psychology. Kolk and colleagues (among others) have argued that the cognitive-perceptual approach highlights how the inter-pretation of physical sensations is not as straightforward as we might initially imagine (see Gijsbers van Wijk & Kolk, 1997; Kolk et al. , 2003 ). Figure 6.1 provides an overview of this approach to symptom perception, which can be conceptualised as having six different temporal steps (Gijsbers van Wijk & Kolk, 1997 ). First, there is some kind of somatic information input, and this may come from physiology, emotions, etc. Second, specific kinds of informa-tion are selected for attention, based on attentional processes (e.g. how much external information is vying for attention). Third, somatic sensations are actu-ally detected by the person. Fourth, the person attributes these sensations to either somatic or psychological causes (e.g. ‘I’m feeling this just because I’ve been stressed’). Cognitive representations of illness are also influential in this process. Fifth, personality characteristics (such as negative affectivity) influ-ence how the sensations are experienced. Finally, all of these cumulatively affect people’s behaviour, such as whether to seek medical help or take up the sick role. Social influences on recognising and interpreting symptoms The social context within which individuals live influences their inter-pretation of bodily sensations. As with many aspects of health and illness that have been discussed previously in this book, people’s interpretations of bodily sensations are inextricably bound up in their gender, age and social class. Gender A social factor that must be considered here is gender.
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