Sensation & Perception
Sensation is detection using our senses and perception is the interpretation of our sensory information. I found this topic very interesting. Humans view the world in different ways because some of us can’t perceive certain things. For example, some pictures could be perceived as two totally different images. In class, some of us saw a man playing a saxophone first while others saw the woman first. At first, I saw the man playing the saxophone and then after a few minutes I began to see the woman. I find it so amazing that when I see the image again, I can see both the woman and man playing the saxophone instantly. It’s so cool how everybody can view things differently because of how their brain works.
Another topic that caught my attention during class was how our sense of taste is aided by our sense of smell. I didn’t know that we perceive a combination of taste and smell until last week. I found it interesting because I always thought it was weird that when I had a cold, everything I ate was less tasty. Now I know that it was less tasty because I couldn’t use my sense of smell. We detect five basic tastes by our smell; which are sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (savory or meaty taste). This completely explains why everyone’s food tastes so good when the whole house smells “delicious”. This whole chapter we discussed interesting and funny because I couldn’t believe how blind I was to our ability to perceive things in different ways and to how sensation plays a major role in our everyday