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Sensation and
Perception 3
Jason Bell Perception Lecture May 6
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Today

• Last week we learnt about the biggest sense, vision

• Today we will discuss two more
• Audition
• Touch and pain

Audition works in frequency and amplitude of sound waves. We will learn

how that is encoded and differentiated in the brain
– Frequency and place theories

Touch is different from other senses in that there are receptors for distinct
types of sensation
– E.g. Hot, cold, vibration, pressure are separate
– Pain sensation has survival importance
– Phantom pain- what it teaches us and how to help

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Audition: the basics

Sound: pressure waves in air, water or some other medium

Two characteristics: frequency and amplitude
• Frequency: the number of sound waves, or cycles, per
second
• 1 Hz = 1 cycle/second. Humans = 20 to 20 000 Hz
• Amplitude: the vertical size of the sound waves
• Decibels (dB): a measure of the physical pressures that
occur at the eardrum

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Audition: sound to neural signal

• Auditory system transforms wave amplitude and frequency into nerve

impulses.
• In this figure we see how sound waves are turned into mechanical energy

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Audition: sound to neural signal contd.

• The movement of fluid in the cochlear bends hair cells in the organ of corti
and this triggers the neuronal signal
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo9bwQuYrRo

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Theories for coding frequency

• Frequency theory
• We sense sound frequency depending on the fluid movement. Theory falls
over as neurons cant respond fast enough (only gets to 1000Hz but we
sense 20 000Hz)
• Place theory
• We sense sound frequency according to the locations of fluid activity in the
cochlear
• In the end both are right. We appear to use the former to encode low
frequencies and the latter at higher frequencies.

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Localising sound

Nervous system uses time and intensity differences of sounds arriving at the
two ears to locate sounds
• Sound will be perceived first and loudest by the closest ear
• Our ability to localise sound is very sensitive

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A mechanism for balance

• The key mechanisms of the vestibular system also lie in the ear.
• The canals lie along distinct planes, to give us the sensation associated
with up, down, left & right movements.
• Like auditory coding, fluid movement creates distinct neural signals that
allow the brain to interpret movement

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Touch: distinct receptors

• Touch receptors: Embedded in outer layer (epidermis) and underlying

layer (dermis) of skin
• Multiple types of touch receptors
• Pressure
• Vibration
• Hot
• Cold

• Kinesthetic receptors: Mechanoreceptors in muscles, tendons, and joints

• Play an important role in sense of where limbs are, what kinds of
movements are made
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Types of touch and sensitivity

• We have separate detectors for different sensations: e.g. hot, cold,

vibration, pressure
• We call this labelled lines- as soon as the nerve signals, we know what
the sensation is
• We know where the signal is because of the mapping of these signals in
the brain

• Touch sensations travel as far as 2 metres to get from skin and muscles
of feet to brain!
• Information must pass through spinal cord
• Axons of various tactile receptors combine into single nerve trunks
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Representing touch in the brain

• Touch sensations are represented somatotopically in the brain

• This means adjacent areas on skin connect to adjacent areas in brain
• Analogous to retinotopic mapping found in vision
• More on thi sin your lab this wek- 2 point thresholds
• Homunculus: Maplike representation of regions of the body in the brain

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Pain

• An important sensation with survival implications

• Case of “Miss C”:
• Born with insensitivity to pain
• Did not sneeze, cough, gag, or blink reflexively
• Suffered injuries such as burning herself on radiator and biting tongue
while chewing food
• Died at age 29 from infections that could have been prevented if she
sensed pain

• On the right is a man known as

The human pincushion…

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Pain and analgesia

• Cognitive aspects of pain

• Pain: Subjective experience with two components: Sensation of the painful
stimulus and emotional response to it

• Analgesia: Decreasing pain sensation during conscious experience

• Endorphins are neurotransmitters associated with pain inhibition
• Release can be due to endogonous or exogenous factors
• endorphins can be naturally released within the body to reduce the
sensation of pain.
• Endorphins can also be released due to external factors- e.g. morphine

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Phantom pain

Phantom limb: Sensation perceived from a physically amputated limb of

the body
– Common for amputees
– Parts of brain listening to missing limbs not fully aware of altered
connections, so they attribute activity in these areas to stimulation
from missing limb

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Treating phantom limb pain

• CAN WE HELP??
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc3CmS8_vUI
• Rogers-Ramachandran, 2000

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Summary

• Today we learnt about the mechanisms for encoding sound

• Frequency (pitch) and amplitude are coded
• We discussed two theories of auditory sensitivity
• The timing of input allows for sound localisation
• The ear also contains the hardware for balance

• Touch
• Distinct detectors for different sensations
• Labelled lines
• The somatosensory representation (the homunculus)

• Pain
• Its importance
• The brain’s remedy to it- endorphins
• Phantom pain and what it teaches us