24
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
Your Amazing, Intelligent Senses
Embark on a fascinating journey into the secret life of your senses. In this introductory lecture, Professor Vishton uses a series of demonstrations to prove that perception is, in fact, amazing; shows you how your sensory systems inherently rely on making "educated guesses"; and lays the roadmap for the lectures ahead.
1.
Your Amazing, Intelligent Senses
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13.
Perception in Action
Recent scientific studies have shown that your actions can actually control your perceptions. Here, Professor Vishton guides you through our latest understanding of the interplay between action and perception. By looking at how perception and action go together, you'll have a much more accurate grasp of the entire human sensory process.
13.
Perception in Action
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2.
The Physiological Hardware of Your Senses
Get a working knowledge of sensory physiology that will prove important for the lectures ahead. Learn how neurons function, how your senses translate energy into electrical signals, how your brain organizes this energy, and how you can mentally represent the infinite range of things out in the world.
2.
The Physiological Hardware of Your Senses
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14.
Attention and Perception
Examine how attention works in the human visual system. You'll learn how attention functions, how it enables you to locate mental resources effectively, how it works as a "spotlight" highlighting aspects of visual input, and how it serves as "perceptual glue" pulling together aspects of a stimulus into perceptual objects.
14.
Attention and Perception
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3.
Neuroimaging—The Sensory Brain at Work
Learn how brain researchers figured out how the functions of sensation and perception map onto particular brain regions. Focusing on what happens when you recognize a face, see how brain-injured patients, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and scientific studies have brought us closer than ever to understanding this complex subject.
3.
Neuroimaging—The Sensory Brain at Work
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15.
Kinesthetic Perception
One human sense often left off the standard list of five: kinesthetic perception, or how you perceive and move your body. Consider aspects of kinesthetic perception, including your vestibular sense (how you perceive the position of your whole body) and proprioception (how you perceive the position of individual body parts).
15.
Kinesthetic Perception
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4.
Brain Modules—Subcomponents of the Senses
There is evidence out there to support the idea that your senses arise from many separate, independent "modules." Here, Professor Vishton discusses the evidence for this organization and demonstrates how your mind puts these modules together to create the rich, combined sensory experience you live with every day.
4.
Brain Modules—Subcomponents of the Senses
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16.
Seeing, Remembering, Inferring Infants
Get a better understanding of adult perception by exploring the intriguing process of perceptual development from birth to the first few years of life. How do infants see? Control their eye moments? Use their sensory input to make inferences about things they can't directly see? Learn all this and more here.
16.
Seeing, Remembering, Inferring Infants
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5.
Perceiving a World in Motion
Explore three key aspects of how you sense motion. First, learn why motion information is important for perceiving the location, shape, and identity of objects around you. Then, examine how your brain perceives and infers motion. Finally, discover how you interpret the complex patterns of motion delivered to your retinas.
5.
Perceiving a World in Motion
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17.
How Infants Sense and Act On Their World
Continue building on ideas about how infant perception works and develops. In this lecture, you'll focus on how an infant's nonvisual senses develop; how an infant connects sensory abilities to actions such as crawling, reaching, and grasping; and how these action abilities influence an infant's sensory and perceptual abilities.
17.
How Infants Sense and Act On Their World
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6.
Seeing Distance and Depth
Probe a classic mystery of sensory processing: depth perception. When is depth perception not accurate? How do cues such as convergence and motion parallax support your perception of size and depth? And how do you put these sources of information together to produce a single, accurate picture of what's around you?
6.
Seeing Distance and Depth
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18.
Illusions and Magic
Enter the world of illusions and see how, in addition to being entertaining, they can reinforce and further develop your grasp of human sensation and perception. Professor Vishton guides you through some of his favorite visual illusions, including the Kanizsa triangle, the "Café wall," and the "paper dragon" illusions.
18.
Illusions and Magic
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7.
Seeing Color and Light
Turn now to the ways that you perceive color. After a quick discussion of the physics of light and color, Professor Vishton explains the trichromatic theory of color perception (how color is processed in your retinas) and the opponent process theory of color perception (how color is interpreted in your visual cortex).
7.
Seeing Color and Light
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19.
Perceiving Emotion in Others and Ourselves
Consider perception and emotion from a variety of perspectives. How does emotion ramp up your sensory sensitivity to fear, or reduce it for disgust? How can various emotional states change your perception of time and space? How can you use vision and hearing to pick up information about someone's future health and well-being?
19.
Perceiving Emotion in Others and Ourselves
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8.
Your World of Taste and Olfaction
In the first of six lectures on your nonvisual senses, focus on taste and smell. You'll learn where your unique flavor preferences come from, how smells are processed in your brain, why aromas can recall particular memories and emotions, how taste interacts with smell and vision, and much more.
8.
Your World of Taste and Olfaction
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20.
Sensing the Thoughts of Others—ESP
Reading minds. Detecting lies. Predicting the future. Debunk these and other "paranormal phenomena" by exploring how we infer others' thoughts and actions through standard perception. Then, consider the possibility that ESP, telepathy, and clairvoyance can exist by learning about an ambitious—and controversial—research project from the 1980s.
20.
Sensing the Thoughts of Others—ESP
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9.
Hearing the World around You
What are the physics of sound? How does your auditory system transform sound into patterns of neural activity? How does sound localization—the process through which you can infer the location of different sound sources—work? Uncover the answers to these and many other questions about your sense of hearing.
9.
Hearing the World around You
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21.
Opponent Process for Perception and Life
Make sense of opponent process, one of the most fundamental organizational principles by which your brain is organized. Consider how opponent process is implemented at the level of individual neurons, how it maintains your internal state of well-being, how it explains why people engage in extreme behavior, and more.
21.
Opponent Process for Perception and Life
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10.
Speech and Language Perception
In this fascinating lecture, discover how you produce and perceive language. Explore how you communicate ideas using basic sounds; how you determine where one word ends and another begins; how things you think are being perceived by your ears are actually sensed by your eyes, and more.
10.
Speech and Language Perception
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22.
Synesthesia—Tasting Color and Seeing Sound
Focus on the strange and interesting phenomenon of synesthesia, which draws seemingly bizarre connections between different sensory inputs (such as associating a letter with a specific color or an image with an unrelated taste). Studying this subject, you'll find, reveals some interesting facts about normal perception as well.
22.
Synesthesia—Tasting Color and Seeing Sound
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11.
Touch—Temperature, Vibration, and Pressure
Broaden your understanding of just how detailed and intricate is your sense of touch. You'll spend time considering the different reception systems embedded in your skin; the ways you use touch to control your actions and to explore your surroundings; and how this particular sense grounds your other senses.
11.
Touch—Temperature, Vibration, and Pressure
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23.
How Your Sensory Systems Learn
How do wine experts correctly identify wine after a single sip? How do chessmasters re-create pieces of a game on a chessboard? The answer is the subject of this lecture: perceptual learning, or the ways your sensory systems change after repeated exposure to stimulus.
23.
How Your Sensory Systems Learn
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12.
Pain—How It Works for You
Pain is more than just a nuisance—it's extremely important to your well-being. Get an overview of the systems of pain perception; the ways your brain processes pain formation; how seeing pain in others can quite literally cause you to feel pain yourself; and what happens when the pain system breaks down.
12.
Pain—How It Works for You
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24.
Fixing, Replacing, and Enhancing the Senses
Cochlear implants, artificial retina projects, tactile television—just three of the fascinating topics you'll learn about in this final lecture on fixing and replacing damaged sensory systems. The successes and failures of these and other technologies have taught us even more about how the senses work.
24.
Fixing, Replacing, and Enhancing the Senses
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6
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
The Meanings of Color
Begin your exploration of how colors affect you with a look at the general science behind color, first uncovered during landmark experiments by Isaac Newton. Then, investigate the pervasive power of color on human behavior with a close look at how color shapes our perception of what food tastes like. Finally, with the aid of intriguing experiments and illuminating case studies, discover the three core ideas that form the foundation of how all humans perceive, interpret, and respond to color.
1.
The Meanings of Color
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4.
The Yellow Lecture
Why is yellow the most vibrant color to the human eye? How does the human eye detect yellow wavelengths so effectively? Why is there such a fine line between “good” and “bad” shades of yellow? When does yellow signal health or weakness, happiness or danger? How can it work to help increase cognitive performance? Find the answers to these and other provocative questions in this richly detailed and rewarding lecture on one of nature’s most powerful colors.
4.
The Yellow Lecture
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2.
The Black and White Lecture
Contrary to what you may think, black and white are colors like any other when examined from the perspective of what your brain sees. In fact, they’re the only true universal colors. In this fascinating lecture, Professor Lidwell takes you inside the meanings behind these two elemental colors. You focus on two specific contexts for black and white: competitive contexts (where black signals aggression and white signals submission) and moral contexts (where black signals evil and white signals goodness).
2.
The Black and White Lecture
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5.
The Green Lecture
Life. Fertility. Envy. Success. These are just a few of the many common associations the brain makes with the color green. Here, Professor Lidwell takes you even deeper into this lush color, guiding you through an exploration of two lesser-known contexts of green: as a way to foster creativity and a way to reduce anxiety and mental fatigue. You’ll also get a chance to probe some more anecdotal (but self-evident) psychological associations with green, including the ways it signals “naturalness” and “approach.”
5.
The Green Lecture
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3.
The Red Lecture
Turn now to the color red, which holds a unique place in the pantheon of colors, thanks to its primal significance in expressing fear, strength, beauty, status, and passion. What do we know with confidence about the meanings behind the color red? Find out by examining several powerful examples of the color red at work: in competitive situations, where it signals dominance; in mating and courtship roles, where it represents male status and female fertility; and in more general situations, where it signals danger and avoidance.
3.
The Red Lecture
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6.
The Blue Lecture
In this final lecture, focus on the last color in the logical color sequence and one of the most commonly chosen favorite colors throughout the world: blue. As you’ll discover, there are some interesting and unique properties of the color blue that set it apart from other colors and make it seem, in some respects, almost magical. You’ll learn about the ways blue fosters and promotes openness and creativity; friendliness and peacefulness; alertness and well-being; and also sadness and melancholy.
6.
The Blue Lecture
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