Sensation and Perception: Second Functional Unit Revisited

Abstract

The following sections explore the processes and pathways involved in the reception and comprehension of sensory information from our environmental surroundings eventually culminating in our perceptions, feelings, and emotional associations for these events. For each sensory modality, this process requires the conversion of physical energies from our world into neural energy and eventually the activation of specific functional cerebral systems for their comprehension, storage within memory, and operational or intentional activity derived and expressed in response to these events. The sense organs are not isolated and passive receptacles of energy information. Instead, the sensory systems originating with the receptor have been found to actively probe and to search the personal and the extrapersonal spaces to update the internal representations of the world and the contents of emotional and cognitive schema. This process involves interactions among the three principle functional units of the brain.