Top down processing
Starts with knowledge, experience and expectations
Bottom up processing
Starts with incoming sensory information
Elements of the perceptual process framework
- environmental stimulus
- Attended stimulus
- Stimulus on the receptors
- Transduction
- Neural processing
- Perception
- Recognition
- Action
Identify parts of the eye
How does colour correspond to different features of light waves
Wavelength/frequency= colour
Amplitude=brightness
The pathway light takes through eyes to the brain
Cornea- pupil- lens- retina (rods+cones)- optic nerve- visual cortex in the brain
Rods
-excel in low light and peripheral motion
-they are elongated
Cones
-better in bright lighting conditions
-concentrated in fovea
What are feature detectors
Neurons in the brain that fire selectively to stimulus features such as edges, lines, angles, movement or colour
Parallel processing
The brain’s ability to process multiple streams of information at once
What is change blindness
Where people fail to notice significant changes in a visual scene
-it happens because the brain focuses on specific details rather than the whole image
What is cognitive neuroscience
The scientific study of the biological processes and neural mechanisms underlying human cognition
Hard vs easy problem of consciousness
Hard: why all the physical processing feels like something focusing on subjective experience
Easy: how the brain processes information, integrates information, controls behaviour and reports mental states
Define blindsight
A neurological phenomenon where patients with damage to their primary visual cortex can detect and react to visual stimuli in their blind field without conscious awareness of seeing them
