SENSORY and MOTOR

SYSTEMS
Sedat BATMAZ, MD
SOSYAL VE BEŞERİ BİLİMLER FAKÜLTESİ SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ
PSİKOLOJİ BÖLÜMÜ PSİKOLOJİ ANABİLİM DALI
UYGULAMALI PSİKOLOJİ ANABİLİM DALI KLİNİK PSİKOLOJİ YÜKSEK LİSANS PROGRAMI

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THE SENSORY SYSTEM

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VISION
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VISION

• Eyesight is probably considered the most important

sense to human beings and in biological terms, vision is
a very complex process.
• Each of our senses is responsive o a different physical
aspect of our environment. The stimulus for vision is
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION.

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The wavelength is the distance between the peaks of the waves.
The wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum varies a deal and
most of it is NOT visible to human beings.

Vision begins with light reflecting off things and entering the
eyes. In other words, the eyes are the biological structures which
collect the electromagnetic radiation that reflects off objects.

It took first century philosopher Ibn Al-Haytham to show that light

rays bounce off any object in all directions but we only see those
rays that hit our eyes at right angles.

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Each eye acts like a
camera would, by
focusing the
light rays on
the retina.

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The most important
parts of the retina
are the visual
receptors – the rods
and the cones.
RODS are rod
shaped and are
responsible for light
and dark
perception.
CONES are cone
shaped and are
responsible for the
perception of
colour.
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 Like all sensory
receptors, the function
of the rods and cones is
to convert or
transduce the
stimulus (light)
into nerve
impulses. Hence,
they are known as
TRANSDUCERS.

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 • Firstly, rods and cones are distributed
differently in the retina. The FOVEA is
There are a the area of the retina that is directly n
number of the line of sight and contains only
cones. The peripheral retina (the area
differences surrounding the fovea) containss both
between rods and cones.
rods and • Rods outnumber cones in the retina by
cones: 20 to 1. There are approximately 6
million cones and 120 million rods. All
the rods are in the peripheral retina.

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VISUAL ROUTE

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VISUAL ROUTE

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COLOUR PERCEPTION
• A good example of across-fibre pattern coding is found
n the perception of colour.
• Isaac Newton discovered that sunlight could be split
into different colours when passed through a glass
prism.
• Each colour represents a different
wavelenght of visible light.
• What you perceive as a particular
colour is the way the brain interprets a
particular wavelength of visible light.

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• There are two theories that explain how
we perceive colour:
• The trichromatic theory
• The opponent process theory
• The trichromatic theory was developed by
Thomas Young and Herman von
Heimholtz. It is based on the fact that we
only need three primary colours to make
up any other colour.

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Young and
Heimholtz
suggested that
we must have
three types
of visual
receptors –
one for each
primary colour.

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 • Ewald Hering’s opponent process theory
relied on two issues that could not be
resolved by the trichromatic theory.
• Firstly, many people feel that yellow is a
colour like red, blue and green, i.e. a
primary colour, even though it is produced
by mixing red and green light.
OPPONENT • Secondly, due to the concept of colour
afterimages. Colour afterimages are
PROCESS produced when you stare at one colour for
a long time. Afterwards you will see the
THEORY opposite colour when you stare at a white
surface. In this phenomena, red is
opposite to green and yellow is opposite
to blue.
• Hering also noticed that colour blind
people who can not see red also can not
see green.
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AUDITION
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• The sense of hearing is known as the
AUDITORY sense.
• Sound is just mechanical pressure. In
other words, air molecules moving in
waves.
• The speed of sound varies according
to the medium it is travelling in. In air
sound travels at 340 meters per
second whilst in water sound travels
at 1360 miles per second.

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A pure
sound, like
that from a
tuning fork,
is known as
a «simple»
sound.
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Sound pressure level represents the force of the pressure against the ear from the
movement of air molecules. This is expressed as the difference from normal atmospheric
pressure and is measured in decibels (dB).

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The ear has the task of transducing the very small changes in air
pressure that constitute sound into nerve impulses.

The auditory sense is thought to have evolved from the sense of touch and
like touch, is based on hair cells.

Some fish have a line of hairs down the length of their body which detects
movements in the water surrounding the fish. In fact, there are some fish
which have primitive internal ears.

Mammals, birds and reptiles all have internal hearing organ called a cochlea,
although it differs in design.

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The ear is divided into three parts:
• The outer ear:
• Consists of the PINNA, the fleshy part on the outside of
the body that is only found in mammals, which channels
sound into the auditory canal and helps to localise sound.
• The AUDITORY CANAL that channels air to the eardrum
and helps to amplify the frequency of the sounds.
• And the EARDRUM (also known as the tympanum) that is
skin under tension and vibrates in resonance to the
incoming sound.
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• The middle ear:
• Consists of the EAR OSSICLES and the EUSTACHIAN TUBE.
• These are the smallest bones in the body and they transmit the vibrations of the
eardrum to the transducer mechanism in the inner ear.
• The ear ossicles consist of three bones, the HAMMER or malleus, the ANVIL or incus,
and the STIRRUP or stapes.
• These bones also act as an amplifier for the vibrations of the eardrum and they lock
together to protect the inner ear from damage from very loud sounds.
• The eustachian tube is a tube going from the middle ear to the back of the throat.
When you swallow, this tube opens and allows the pressure on both sides of the ear
drum to equalise.

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• The inner ear:
• Consists of the OVAL WINDOW and the COCHLEA.
• The oval window is a thin membrane that leads into
the cochlea.
• The foot of the stirrup rests on the oval window and
thus transmits the vibrations of the eardrum to the
internal structures of the cochlea.
• These internal structures of the cochlea pick up the
tiny vibrations and convert them into nerve impulses
that are carried by the auditory nerve.

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 • As the basilar membrane moves in
response to the vibrations of the fluid
40 around it, the hair cells hit the
tectorial membrane and their
bending caues nerve impulses to be
sent along the auditory nerve.
• The organ of corti runs along the
whole length of the basilar membrane
of the coiled cochlea. The human
cochlea has about 15.500 hair cells
arranged in rows along its length.
• The tympanic and vestibular canals are
joined at the end of the cochlea at a
point called the helicotrema.
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 AUDITORY ROUTE
42 • The two auditory nerves (one from each cochlea)
enter the brain on either side of the brain stem
and pass through a series of structures before
reaching the primary auditory cortex in each
temporal lobe.
• The majority of the auditory cortex is hidden
under a fold on the temporal lobe.
• Like the visual cortex, the auditory cortex is
topographically organised so that signals from
specific hair cells in the cochlea end up in the
same spot in the cortex.
• The majority (but not all) of the nerves from
each ear go to the opposite side of the brain
hemispheres. So most of the sounds from the left
ear are processed in the right auditory cortex
and vice versa.
AUDITORY INFORMATION INTERPRETATION
There are two theories which have tried to explain how the brain interprets information from
the cochlea receptors. In other words, how each sound frequency is identified in the cortex.

The first theory is frequency theory that suggests that frequencies detected at the cochlea are
the same as the frequency of the rate of firing of a group of auditory neurons.

The second theory is place theory. The basilar membrane is stiffer near to the oval window than it
is at the other end. This means that different frequencies can be detected at different points along the
basilar membrane.

Most researchers now believe in a combination of both these theories to explain how the
brain interprets sound.
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MECHANICAL SENSES

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 These are the senses that involve the bending or
distortion of the receptors. In other words, our sense
of TOUCH. It also covers temperature sensation,
pain, balance, and proprioception.

THE
MECHANICAL Proprioception is the sense that lets us know the
position of our body and limbs.

SENSES
Vestibular sensation is your sense of balance. If
you move your head up and down whilst reading a book, it is
still possible to read the pages. The reason for this is because
your vestibular organ that monitors the position of your head,
compensates for it with eye movements.
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 We are only really aware
The vestibular organ of vestibular sensation
provides information under special
about the tilt and circumstances, like when
movement of your head. you are on a roller
coaster.
The vestibular organ
consists of the These structures provide
the brain with
semicircular canals
information about three
and the otolith organ aspects of balance and
(or vestibule) which both position: position, speed
contain modified touch and acceleration.
receptors.

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Another mechanical sense is
SOMATOSENSATION.
It includes a number of
different senses.

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The information from somatosensory receptors in the
head enters the CNS through cranial nerves whilst that
from receptors below the neck enter through the spinal
cord.

All the information from the touch receptors are sent to

the primary somatosensory cortex in the
parietal lobes. Other areas of the cortex are also
involved in the processing of touch information.

The somatosensory cortex receives input primarily from

the contralateral side of the body. In other words, touch
information from the left side of the body goes mostly to
the right hemisphere and vice versa.

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 PAIN
Pain is a very important sense as it alerts us to
danger.

The word pain refers to a wide variety of different

sensations, from a dull headache to a sharp cut.

There are three types of pain receptors:

• Thermal receptors detect extreme heat and exteme

cold.
• Mechanical receptors detect intense stimulation like
cutting and pinching.
• Polymodal receptors detect both thermal and
mechanical pressure as well as detecting chemicals that
are released when body tissue is injured.

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Signals from pain receptors are sent partly
along unmyelinated and myelinated axons
to the spinal cord.

The unmyelinated axons are

faster and carry sharp pain
information so you feel sharp
pain before other pain.

In the spinal cord, neurons release

SUBSTANCE P that helps to enhance the
effects of neurotransmitters. From the spinal
cord, pain information goes firstly to the
thalamus in the brain which then relays
information to areas of the cortex and areas
of the brain associated with emotional
responses.
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• It is not uncommon to come across
people who are known to receive
extremely painful injuries, yet who
continue with their activities. They do
not feel the pain.
• This was addressed by the Gate Theory
of Pain proposed by Melzack and Wall.
• They proposed a system (mainly in the
spinal cord) where stimulation from
sensors in the skin and from axons from Gate Theory
the brain shut a gate to the pain from an
injured part of the body. The gate of Pain
mechanism means that the brain’s
exposure to pain can be reduced.
• From a survival point of view, this is
important. The brain can reduce the
amount of pain you can endure to allow
you to escape any immediate danger you
might be in.
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 The brain The brain’s own
regulates pain opiates are
through OPIOID called There are
mechanisms. ENDORPHINS. therapies that
These are They have many help pain relief
systems that roles but the that are thought
reduce pain by best known is to involve the
being receptive ANALGESIA – stimulation of
to certain the relief from endorphin
chemicals. pain. release.

These opioid All kinds of

mechanisms are painful stimuli
also responsive evoke the
to opiate drugs release of
like MORPHINE. endorphins.
So these
artificial drugs
can also provide
pain relief.
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 The release of
histamine is coupled
with the release of
Sometimes injured other chemicals that
tissue becomes help to repair the
inflamed. This causes damage. The soreness
In contrast to the immune system to ensures that the
endorphins, the brain relase HISTAMINE that injured area is rested
can also produce causes the tissue to so it can recover more
chemicals that become sore. In these quickly.
INCREASE the amount cases, even the gentlest
of pain you feel. touch feels extremely
painful.

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CHEMICAL SENSES
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THE CHEMICAL SENSES
• These are the senses of smell and taste.
• They are known as the chemical senses because, in essence,
they are the body’s way of detecting chemicals in the
environment.
• Taste is the «close-up» sense and smell is the «distance»
sense.
• These senses have two functions:
• Obviously, taste and smell have an aesthetic function:
they greatly enrich our experience of the world.
• However, being able to detect chemicals in our
environment also has some survival value. In general,
things that are beneficial to our body taste and smell
good, and things that are harmful to us tend to taste and
smell bad.
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TASTE (GUSTATORY) SENSE
• The stimuli for taste are any substance that
dissolves in water.
• The tongue is where the main receptors for taste
are found.
• If you look at a tongue closely, you will see that it
is covered in small bumps. These are called
papillae.
• It is in these bumps that the taste buds are found,
and it is in these buds that the cells which allow
us to taste are found.

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• It is generally thought that there are at least
four primary tastes:
• Sweet
• Salt
• Sour
• Bitter
• Each of these tastes is associated with the
detection of different types of chemicals. For
example, a sweet taste is detected when
molecues of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are
present in food.
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 In Japan, there has always
been a word for a special taste
It was thought that there were
not covered by sweet, sour,
four primary tastes until the
bitter or salt known as
early 1900s.
UMAMI. It consititutes the
fifth primary taste.

Umami is difficult to translate

Umami is the main flavour of to Western palates. It is
a type of seaweed soup called associated with the words
KOMBU broth and is found in meaty, savoury, delicious and
a number of Japanese foods. essence. It is found in cheeses
and in cured meats.

The chemical which produces Glutamate has a distinct taste

the umami taste is different from sweet, sour,
GLUTAMATE, an amino acid salt and bitter, and therefore
which is the building block of constitutes a fifth primary
protein molecules. taste.

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CHEMICAL ROUTE
• Once the chemical is detected by the taste receptors, the
nerve impulse is carried to the brain along three large
cranial nerves.
• The taste information goes firstly to subcortical structures:
the medulla, then to the pons, the thalamus and the
amygdala.
• These sturctures then send taste information to three main
areas of the cortex.
• The information from the taste receptors is added to
information from the COMMON CHEMICAL SENSE.

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CHEMICAL ROUTE
• The common chemical sense is separate from the taste
sense. It consists mostly of the TRIGEMINAL nerve of the
head and free nerve endings in the mouth and nasal cavity.
• This system is sensitive to a wide variety of different
stimuli. In humans, this includes spices like ginger and chilli.
• It seems likely that the information for the sense of taste is
coded in an across-fibre pattern although the exact
mechanism is not fully understood.
• So the five primary tastes and the common chemical sense
give humans all of their taste information.

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SMELL (OLFACTORY) SENSE
• The olfactory sense consists of two aspects:
• Distance smell
• Food smell
• The true variety and detail in our sense of taste actually comes from
our sense of smell.
• Like the sense of taste, the sense of smell detects chemicals in our
environment. In the case of smell, the chemicals that are detected
must be gases.
• The properties of the molecules of gaseous chemicals are important
in olfaction. Things like a molecule’s size, its weight and what is known
as its vibrational frequency and others.
• It is not known which of these is critical.

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OLFACTORY RECEPTORS

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• Each olfactory receptor functions for only six to eight weeks
before deteriorating. New receptor cells are constantly being
produced to replace these.
• Each one is only receptive to a very narrow range of
chemicals.
• At the end of the olfactory rod, there are very fine hair-like
structures embedded in watery mucus. These are known as
olfactory cilia.
• This mucus contains a special chemical called olfactory
binding protein, the purpose of which is to attract chemicals
that are normally attracted to water.
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OLFACTORY ROUTE

• At the top of the nasal cavity, there are tiny holes where the axons from the olfactory receptors
pass to make up the olfactory nerve.
• This nerve goes straight to the olfactory bulb.
• The olfactory bulb is a part of the forebrain that receives olfactory information.
• While there is no real evidence that smell receptors fall into categories like taste receptors,
each smell chemical stimulates a small but different area of the olfactory bulb.
• The olfactory bulb sends axons to various parts of the cerebral cortex.
• All the receptors that are sensitive to a specific chemical stimulate a specific area of the cortex.
• The organization of the olfactory cortex varies very little from person to person.

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 Olfaction is subject to something called adaptation. This means once
you’ve smelt something your ability to smell that thing again quickly
fades.

Unlike vision, and taste, it is difficult to establish exactly how many kinds
of olfactory nerves we have. It has been estimated that we have several
hundred olfactory receptor proteins.

Rats and mice have around a thousand receptor proteins and this
means they can distinguish smells that humans can not.

Similarly to taste, the coding of smells is across-fibre pattern in the

brain.

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The Effect of Smell
on Behaviour
• Pheromones are
chemicals that are secreted by
animals to transmit information
to other animals.
• The effect of pheromones is well
known in social insects like bees
or termites, but from our point
of view, the most interesting
effects are those on mammals.

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 THE
MOTOR
SYSTEM

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 • The central nervous system controls the physical
movement of the body through muscles.
• There are three types of muscles in the body:
• SKELETAL muscles that move the body and
limbs. They are also known as STRIATED
The Control muscles because they look striped.
• SMOOTH muscles control the internal
of Movement organs.
• CARDIAC muscles are found in the heart.
They are different from the other two in that
they do not tire.
• Although essentially all muscles work in the same
way, skeletal muscles are involved in movement.

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• Muscles are made up of
long cells called muscle
fibres.
• These are connected to
motor neurons by their
axons.
• The fewer the number of
fibres connected to a single
neuron, the finer the
control of that muscles.
• One of the longest motor
neuron axons in nature is
that in a giraffe’s leg. The
single axon runs from the
neck all the way to its toe
measuring several meters
long.
Each muscle fibre can
only contract.
So in order for limbs
to move, muscles
are organized in
antagonistic pairs.

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 • Reflexes (like the knee jerk) that are controlled in
the spinal cord are usually called INVOLUNTARY
movements.
Each different
• This is because these types of movement do not
types of respond to external stimuli and are not responsive
movement to reinforcements and punishments.
depend on • Swallowing, for example, is a reflex action that is
mostly involuntary. But you can inhibit swallowing
different kinds or swallow whenever you like. The control of
of control by swallowing is not total. Trying to swallow ten times
in a row is very difficult. Similarly, stopping
the nervous swallowing for 15 minutes is also very difficult.
system: • Most movements are a complex combination of
both voluntary and involuntary control.

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• Some movements like kicking are known
as ballistic movements. These are
movements that once started, continue
on to the end without the ability to be
corrected by feedback.
• True ballistic movments are actually quite
rare. One good example is the flapping of
a bird’s wings. The majority of
movements are responsive to feedback.
• Somewhat similar to ballistic movements
are MOTOR PROGRAMS. These are
predictable and fixed sequences of
movements that are controlled by a
central pattern generator usually in the
spinal cord.
• Motor programs tend to produce rhytmic
movements like when a dog shakes itself
dry. Motor programs can be inbuilt, like
yawning, or learnt, like playing a piano.
 Many parts of the nervous system are responsbile
for the control of movement. In fact, different
parts of the nervous system and the brain are
responsible for different types of movement.

The Control Walking and running are controlled by the spinal

cord.
of
Movement In a paper published in 1976, Shik and Orlovsky
showed that motor programs like chewing,
swallowing, breathing and so on are largely the
domain of the spinal cord and medulla.

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• The CEREBELLUM is another very important structure in the control of movement. This is especially the case in
the programming of the order of complex movements and timings.
• People who have damage to the cerebellum have difficulty making fast ballistic movements such as playing
musical instruments.
• The cerebellum also corrects movements once they have started so that a complicated sequence of movements,
e.g. touching your nose with your finger, looks like one smooth movement.
• Cerebellum damage causes these kinds of sequences of movements to have many exagerrated corrections.

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 Alcohol affects the
The cerebellum is largely cerebellum quickly and so
responsible for keeping when you drink too much
your balance. alcohol it is your sense of
balance that is lost first.

The role of the In terms of movement,

cerebellumin movement is however, the cerebellum is
quite complex and it also mostly involved in the
has a role in areas other timing and sequences of
than movement. movement.

The cerebellum tends to Animals that don’t move

be large in animals that very fast, e.g. sloths, don’t
make fast, accurate seem to be affected by
movements, e.g. birds. damage to the cerebellum.
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• The BASAL GANGLIA are a set of
structures in the brain including the
caudate nucleus, the putamen, the
globus pallidus and the substantia
nigra.
• The basal ganglia are also responsible
for making movements smooth.
• These structures border the thalamus
and exchange information between
them and the cortex.
• The basal ganglia structures are
especially important during complex
sequences of movement.
• The basal ganglia do not initiate
movements. They are active just
before movement but after activity in
the cortex. It seems that the basal
ganglia help to organise sequences of
movement.
• People with movement disorders, e.g.
Parkinson’s Disease, have damage to
structures in the basal ganglia.

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 There are a
number of
different areas
of the cortex
involved in the
control of
movement:

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In 1937, neurologist
Wilder Penfield
mapped the
primary motor
cortex by
stimulating areas of
the brain whilst his
patients were
undergoing brain
surgery under local
anaesthesia.

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Preparation for Movement

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Thank you…
For references, refer to your syllabus.
For additional reading, refer to the recommended textbooks.

sedat.batmaz@asbu.edu.tr
@sedatbatmaz
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