Questions tagged [sensation]
Questions about the ways that our bodies processes incoming visual, auditory, gustatory, somatosensory, proprioceptive, and pain (among others) information
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What does it sound like, subjectively, when a shockwave bursts your eardrums?
A pressure pulse above 150 dB will burst the eardrums. I speculate that displacement of the membrane is far above normal range. I speculate that the initial displacement will get passed along to the ...
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What are the biological reasons for hearing loss?
I recently stumbled upon an interesting online hearing test on YouTube, and it got me thinking about the root causes of hearing loss. I'm curious about the main contributing factors behind the loss of ...
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Do humans see rates of change of colour
On a computer, we measure colour numerically, as three values, say red, green, blue. While our eyes include detectors for red, green and blue (although these aren't exactly the same as the light ...
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What are the effects of an overexposure to solitary confinement?
Solitary confinement has been shown to be bad for mental health.
I was wondering if really long solitary confinement, like this one are different to normal solitary confinement. In terms of effects ...
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Is There Any Evidence that People Prefer Just Intonation
In music, it's common to hear the refrain that people like harmonics (notes played at frequencies that are rational multiples of one another) the most out of different combinations of notes (at least ...
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"Blindness" caused by being in a homogeneous and structureless space [duplicate]
Is it true that if you stay in a homogeneous featureless space for a long time (for example, in fog, cloud, darkness), then you can temporarily stop seeing or start seeing a black background?
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Do people prefer simple colours?
To start off with, I am not a psychologist, nor do I know very much about it beyond behavioural economics.
A long time ago I decided to find my exact favourite colour. I knew it would be a yellow, so ...
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How does a visual hallucination keep an observer convinced of its reality? [duplicate]
If a psychotic patient experiencing visual hallucinations hallucinated a random object on a table, in a situation that seemed somewhat realistic at first (for example, they saw a red, shiny telephone ...
user32283
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How do hair cells recognize frequencies?
I read that "a neuron can fire up to 1000 all-or-none impulses/sec" 1. But the hair cells in our ears are trimmed to recognize frequencies up to 20 kHz.
How can a hair cell detect a ...
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What is the "nails on a chalkboard" response?
Everyone is familiar with the squirmy, muscle-clenching response to hearing nails on a chalkboard. But I have known people to have this same response to other stimuli, such as:
Velvety fabrics
...
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Does the human eye have a muscle that if paralyzed would make us only see things that are in motion?
In "Kwantechizm", a relatively popular book written by a Polish physicist Andrzej Dragan, I read that chickens move their head so that they can see things that are not in motion, with the ...
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Does the brain have code? [duplicate]
I am not sure if the brain is totally analogous to a computer but it certainly behaves like one in some respects. It seems to take input information from the environment, process that signal, store ...
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Is thermoception part of the sense of touch in the 5 human senses or is it a 6th separate sense?
In an answer provided by DavidCian, it is mentioned that thermoception is separate to the 5 human bodily senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste). Yet, I would have thought it would be part of ...
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Are centre-surround antagonism and lateral inhibition synonyms?
On Wikipedia, there is one page for centre-surround antagonism and one for lateral inhibition. They both concern the activity of a neuron being reduced by stimuli present not in the center of its ...
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How do the outer hair cells amplify the traveling wave?
Depending on the movement frequency, outer hair cells can stretch and contract, amplifying the amplitude of the traveling wave at the basilar membrane.
How can they do this exactly? what is the point ...
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Why do people express disgust when enjoying to certain music?
There's a word for this, stank face. Not sure what genres it is associated with, but I experience it mainly when I listen to and enjoy funk or rap. The "fatter" the beat and the groovier the ...
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Is it generally accepted idea that a memory associated with strong olfactory stimuli will be kept longer?
Question:
If you go to see flowers and don't smell them, is it likely that you will forget the event easier than when you do smell them? assuming all the other factors are constant.
Here's the story.
...
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Is there an upper bound on signals ascending from the sensory nerves through the medulla?
I'm starting to go down a research path related to haptic and embodied cognition. Though I haven't taken a deep dive into neuroanatomy (only a 300 level undergrad cognitive neuroscience course's worth ...
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Explanation for the "spinal energy" and other "Kundalini awakening" symptoms?
Lots of people have been sharing first-hand reports of their personal experience of the so-called "Kundalini awakening". The following are a few illustrative anecdotes:
1,
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user25376
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Is adrenaline rush the real cause behind feelings of "electricity", "fire", "heat" or "burning all over" reported in certain religious groups? [duplicate]
Doing my own independent research, I've noticed a clear pattern of religious people reporting feelings and sensations that they usually describe with expressions such as "waves of electricity&...
user25376
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Question about the role of the sensory receptors compared to the sensory cortoces
I have two questions regarding the fact that each sensory receptor has its specific ion channels that open in response to a specific stimulus (for example, ion channel that opens when streching for ...
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Is Sensation Seeking Still a Thing?
The first time I read an article, which offered me a high level basic understanding of a behavioral model called sensation seeking, changed the way I look at world since. This was the first time I'd ...
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What keywords to learn more about sense pleasing?
The article What Makes Something Aesthetically Pleasing? | Simple Minded lists some way to pleasing your senses:
Vision: balance, emphasis, rhythm, proportion, pattern, unity and contrast. Along with ...
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Reason for experiencing electric current flowing through body during sleep from top to bottom [closed]
I know about sleep paralysis and there is several information about it, available over literature.
Sleep paralysis is a temporary inability to move or speak that occurs
when you're waking up or ...
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Can thought processes be sensed to happen exactly in the head?
It's common knowledge that humans think with their brains. So it's common to associate hard thinking with head and to seemingly "feel" that it's the head which is loaded when one's thinking.
But does ...
Ruslan
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What is a sensorimotor connection in plain English?
I have googled, but haven't found any definition simple enough that I understand. I would appreciate it if you could give me an example as well!
Thanks,
Jack
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Are there any psychological studies of thirst following food that account for SFO-Nos1 activity?
Some studies up to 2015 surprising found that salty vs. non-salty food doesn't make much difference to thirst. E.g. a 2015 study found that:
However, according to Prof. Leshem, despite our gut ...
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I have developed a self-regulation system that allows change at the physiological level. Does it have any merit?
Please note: I do not hold a degree. This system is based on experience and self-testing.
I developed a self-regulation system that allows for the manipulation of sensations where they occur in the ...
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Are there any cases of a person with misophonia for which the condition has been passed on to their child?
genetics increase one's risk of PTSD, as well PTSD can be developed through vicarious trauma.
Misophonia condition appears to have the following in common with PTSD;
Anger , muscle tension, feeling ...
user21566
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Is Paul's Churchland claim about qualia supported by science?
Knowledge argument:
Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes ...
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Is there any neuroscience research on the emotion of feeling nothing?
When people entering anechoic chambers, logically there is a sensation of silence because relatively speaking, the sound levels are much lower compared to some normal baseline
Likewise, when there is ...
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Is "haptodysphoria" an urban legend or is there another term under which this studied?
I was googling for something like why some people don't like to touch velvet, and the top hit was https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/haptodysphoria where it's defined as
An odd, disagreeable sensation ...
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Is there a difference between physiological stimulations and psychological stimulations?
From what I understand, physiological stimulation (or stimulus or sensation) "refers to sensory excitation, the action of various agents or forms of energy (stimuli) on receptors that generate ...
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Synesthesia hearing to see
Can a synesthetic person, also known as a synaesthete, see sounds even when that person is actually blind? If so how does the brain interpret a picture without a vision?
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Does the perception of odors change over time?
Is it normal for the perception of odors to change over time? I mean the same odors, like the smell of a snack with the same formula as before.
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What is the frequency range of electrotactile stimulation?
I have been trying to find out what the (human) electrotactile frequency range is. Since this is a much more experimental method (and more unpleasant) than the traditional vibrotactile method, the ...
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Is V1 involved in visual imagery?
It's well known that mental imagery shares the neural substrates of its respective modality, despite dissociable multivariate patterns. For example, visual imagery can be decoded across the ventral ...
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What are the temporal limits of the auditory system?
I would like to know what the time scale is of the human ear. I mean, what is the shortest duration of a sound that a human ear can notice
and what is the longest duration of a sound that a human ear ...
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What is the cause of differences that are too small to see?
Consider two identical pieces of paper.
Scenario 1: On both something is drawn in black ink. If the difference between the areas covered in black ink is sufficiently small, I cannot see the ...
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Does the wrist have more neurons than the finger? [closed]
Once upon a time, I felt an ant crawling on my hand. I couldn't feel it initially, until it reached my wrist. Then I tried to let the ant crawl on my skin; what I found was that I couldn't feel the ...
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Does increased neural complexity slows down brain operation speeds?
If a sensory input is perceived, one needs to process this input from the sensory end organ (sensation) up to the brain (perception). Does a more more complex neural network consume more time than a ...
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What explains the characteristics of the receptive fields of simple cells in V1?
Here is a YouTube video of a Hubel & Wiesel experiment from 1965 in the visual cortex. The video shows the experimenters outlining the receptive field of a simple cell in the first part of the ...
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Do people with birth defects feel phantom limbs?
The phenomenon of phantom limbs in people who have lost arms or legs to amputation is pretty well-established. It makes a fair amount of sense. The "brain mapping" of the limb (and for that matter the ...
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Is our sense of smell heightened when we are asleep?
My question is whether our sense of smell is stronger when we sleep? From an evolutionary perspective this could have been beneficial in terms of runaway camp fires, marauding saber tooth tigers or ...
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Is there knowledge of the receptive field patterns of cortical columns in associative brain regions?
The retinotopic, area-based connectivity patterns of the columnar receptive fields in the visual cortex are well-established.
Do any mappings of the columnar receptive field connectivity patterns ...
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How does the brain project pain on to a particular part of the body?
How does our brain translate periheral sensations due to injuries into pain perceptions? As an in silico analogy - if a stimulus is applied to a sensor it can be transmitted to a microprocessor. The ...
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Difference in hemispheres when processing of somatosensory information
We know from many studies (see e.g. Taylor, 2009 for an empirical and experiential overview) that processing of information is massively heterogeneous with respect to hemisphere. How does this ...
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How does the inner ear encode sound intensity?
Different areas of the inner ear (the cochlea) are sensitive to different acoustic frequencies. Hence, the cochlea basically performs a fast Fourier transform on the audio signal. This spectral ...
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Do we perceive contrast colour patterns easily because of adaptation?
I can understand that colours are just manipulation of our brain to light rays of different wavelength and energy. We perceive patterns better at higher contrast. Do we perceive patterns better at ...
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If the color black reflects no light, how are we able to see it?
If color as we perceive it is dependent on the wave lengths that are reflected by an object, with white reflecting all hues and black absorbing all, how do we detect a black object?
I do understand ...
noBuddha