Everything we know and can learn about the world and our society is brought to our awareness by the sensory systems.  Even controlling our behavior depends on sensing how our own movements are progressing.  This course looks at how the more basic senses work and contribute to this awareness: the sense of touch that gives us direct contact with the world (or does it?); the abilities to sense chemicals in the food we eat and the air we breathe are converted into interpretations with strong emotional contexts; while sensing vibrations in air enables us to detect events out of sight and to receive both verbal and musical communications from others.  The vast differences in these sources of information - mechanical, chemical, vibrational, and also the electromagnetic basis of vision - are sensed by specialized biological receptors which transform the information into nerve impulses.  For all that, we shall see how the principles used by the brain to interpret the information are surprisingly similar. 

 

PREREQUISITE: Psychology 101-102, 211, 278-279 or permission of instructor.

Three hours a week