PSYC2274 · Psychology

Sensation and Perception

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

How do our senses tell us what is really in the world around us, and can our senses be trusted? These questions have been pondered by philosophers for centuries, and more recently by psychologists and neuroscientists. This course will explore the anatomical/biological basis of sensation (how the world that we perceive is translated into the raw language of the nervous system) and the cognitive processes underlying perception (how our brains reconstruct the physical world from these neural inputs). We will examine these questions for vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.