PSY 2600

This course examines how the more basic senses work and how they contribute to our awareness of the world. The sense of touch seems to give us direct contact with the world. The abilities to sense chemicals in the food we eat and the air we breathe guide not only what we eat but also our emotions. Sensing vibrations in air enables us to detect events out of sight and to receive both verbal and musical communications from others. Content covered in this course also considers principles and theories of how visual information is received, and how it is processed and combined to produce visual images. These vastly different sources of information-mechanical, chemical and gravitational, as well as the electromagnetic basis of vision are sensed by specialized biological receptors that transform the information into nerve impulses. This course examines how the principles used by the brain to interpret the diverse information are surprisingly similar. NOTE: Credit will not be allowed for PSY-2600 if a student has already recevied credit for PSY-2610 or PSY-2620