Content
- Physiological mechanism of sensations
- Types of sensations according to Sherrington
- Properties of sensations
- Sensitivity thresholds
- Sensory disorders
- Adaptation, synesthesia, sensitization
Sense organs are organs that perceive and partially process information that can come from both outside and inside. There are 5 main sense organs: eyes, nose, skin, ears, tongue.
Visual sensations
With the help of the eyes, a person receives 80-90% of information about the world around him. Visual sensations arise when light rays act on the nerve cells of the retina. Rods (130 million) are located on the periphery of the retina; they are responsible for distinguishing between black, white, and gray at any time of the day. Cones (7 million) are located in the center and are responsible for distinguishing color. The mechanism for creating visual sensations: the stimulus acts on the nerve cells of the retina of the eye, excitation occurs, which is transmitted along the pathways to the corresponding part of the brain.
Olfactory sensations
The sense of smell is one of the most ancient and important senses from an evolutionary point of view. Many animals use these sensations to navigate in space, defend themselves from attacks, communicate, choose partners, etc. Olfactory sensations are caused by particles of a substance that fall on the nasal mucosa.
Tactile sensations
Nerve fibers located in every area of the skin send signals to the brain about temperature fluctuations, touch, and pain. The skin perceives vibration, temperature, electrical, chemical, and mechanical irritations.
Auditory sensations
Auditory sensations are caused by auditory waves, i.e. air vibrations from a sound source. The human hearing range is 16-20,000 vibrations per second (16 Hz-20 kHz), higher frequencies are ultrasound, lower frequencies are infrasound. 1000 vibrations per second is normal.
Taste sensations
During taste sensations, particles of objects affect the mucous membrane of the tongue. There are 4 basic tastes: sour, bitter, sweet, salty. The tongue is conventionally divided into several zones, each of which perceives its own type of taste.
Sometimes the vestibular apparatus in the inner ear (sense of balance and sensation in space), as well as muscles, tendons, ligaments (changes in the position of individual parts and the entire body in space, determination of the mass and volume of objects, analysis of movements and their coordination) are added to this list.
Signs of a lack of emotion
To understand how to start feeling emotions again, you first need to realize that you don't feel them. It sounds funny, of course, but in reality many people get so used to living in a gray world without any feelings that they don’t remember what it’s like to be happy, sad, angry, surprised and afraid. Not only positive emotions disappear, but also negative ones, which, however, are also important for the full functioning of our nervous system.
So, you have stopped feeling emotions if:
- life does not bring you joy, every day is boring for you;
- you perform all actions automatically;
- you don’t understand what you want, you don’t know what could bring you pleasure;
- you suppress your dissatisfaction with life with bad habits (overeating, alcohol, cigarettes, etc.);
- It’s hard for you to get rid of obsessive thoughts and states.
All of the above indicates that you have disabled the perception of your own feelings. You are in a low energy state, perhaps even depressed. Fortunately, this is not a death sentence. It is normal to not feel emotions and feelings after stress and during chronic, prolonged stress. But you need to get out of this state as soon as possible.
Physiological mechanism of sensations
The process of the emergence of sensations can be represented as follows. An irritant (music) with certain characteristics affects a certain sense organ (ears), which perceives information and transmits it along conductive pathways to the brain, where this information is processed, and we begin to hear music. This is how the surrounding world is reflected.
Charles Sherrington, an English physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate in physiology or medicine, proposed a classification of sensations according to the nature of reflection and location of receptors.
Types of sensations according to Sherrington
1. Interoceptive sensations. The most ancient and elementary group of sensations. Interoceptive sensations combine signals that reach us from the internal environment of the body. They signal the state of the internal processes of the body; they arise thanks to receptors located on the walls of the stomach, heart and circulatory system and other internal organs. This type of sensation is one of the least conscious. They are associated with an emotional state.
2. Exteroceptive sensations. The largest group of sensations. They provide signals from the outside world and provide the basis for our conscious behavior. Exteroceptive sensations can be conditionally divided into 2 groups: a) contact sensations (caused by the direct impact of an object on the senses, for example, taste, touch); b) distant sensations (reflect the qualities of an object located at some distance from the sense organs, for example, hearing, vision).
3. Propreocytic sensations. They transmit information about the position of the body in space and the position of the musculoskeletal system, and provide regulation of movements. Includes the sense of balance (static sensation) and motor (kinesthetic) sensation. Receptors are located in muscles, joints, and ligaments.
Feelings
Feeling is a human emotional process that reflects a subjective evaluative attitude towards real or abstract objects.
Unlike emotions and moods, the emotional processes described by the concept of “feeling” are tied to objects: they arise in relation to someone or something, and not to the situation as a whole. “I am afraid of this person” is a feeling, and “I am scared” is an emotion.
Here is a small list of feelings that we experience from time to time: love, hatred, fear, gratitude, respect, devotion, friendship.
Feelings vary in characteristics:
- Intensity: This is the strength of feeling. The stronger the feeling, the stronger its physiological manifestations and influence on human behavior. By observing him, you can understand what feelings overwhelm him the most, what is important to him and what he pays attention to.
- Valence: This is tone. Feelings can be pleasant, unpleasant and ambivalent. If everything is clear with the first two, then the last one may be of great interest to you. Why does a person have mixed feelings? Why? What are the underlying reasons? You will have to answer all these questions if you want to create a correct psychological portrait of a person and learn to influence him.
- Content: feelings reflect various aspects, features of the meaning of objects and situations that cause them. People show feelings based on context, so observe them carefully.
- Sthenicity: feelings are divided into sthenic and asthenic. The former encourage active activity, mobilize human strength (hate, love, and others). The latter paralyze or relax (for example, fear).
Feelings manifest differently among people because each person has their own set of personality traits and traits that influence feelings. The same feeling can be experienced and manifested differently depending on the emotional state a person is in at the moment. For example, the feeling of friendship can be accompanied at different times by emotions of joy, interest, resentment, shame and irritation.
Before you make a conclusion about a person, you need to observe him and try to identify both the feeling that he is currently experiencing and its underlying meaning.
Properties of sensations
1. Modality is a qualitative characteristic of sensations. This is the basic feature of each particular sensation that can distinguish it from another sensation. For example, for auditory sensations this is pitch, timbre, volume.
2. Intensity is a quantitative characteristic of sensations. It is determined by the force with which the stimulus acts on the object.
3. Localization is a spatial characteristic of sensations. A property that indicates the localization of a stimulus in space.
4. Duration is a temporary characteristic of sensations. Indicates the time during which the stimulus was in effect.
Sensitivity thresholds
So, in order for a person to feel the effect of any stimulus, the intensity of this stimulus must have a certain value (if you are standing at a distance of a kilometer from your interlocutor, a whisper is clearly not going to help you). You can take this situation as an example.
You ask your friend, who is at a distance from you, how he is doing. But he didn’t hear you, since your voice as an irritant does not have the required intensity. You ask a little louder in hopes that he will hear you. But the interlocutor hears something vaguely reminiscent of your question. Your friend’s senses (ears) have perceived this information, but if you repeat this question a little quieter, he will no longer hear. This is called the lower absolute threshold of sensitivity, i.e. the minimum strength of the stimulus causing a barely noticeable sensation. At one point, you get tired of choosing the right sound level, because your friend can’t hear you well anyway. Instead of just walking up to him, you decide to scream at the top of your lungs so that he can definitely hear you. And you started screaming without noticing your other friend who approached you from the other side. For him, this volume level was too high, it caused pain. This is called the upper absolute threshold of sensitivity, i.e. the maximum magnitude of the stimulus at which sensations disappear or change (for example, turn into pain).
Sensation thresholds are the ability of analyzers to reflect individual properties of stimuli or subtle differences between them. Psychophysics, whose founder is considered to be Gustav Theodor Fechner, studies and measures sensation thresholds.
The absolute threshold of sensation is the minimum value of the stimulus at which sensation first occurs. Stimuli that do not reach it lie below the threshold of sensations, i.e. we do not feel them (for example, dust particles that constantly fall on the skin). The weaker the stimuli that cause sensations (i.e., the lower the absolute threshold value), the higher the ability of the sensory organs to respond to these influences.
The difference (differential) threshold is the minimum change in the intensity of the stimulus, causing a barely noticeable change in sensations.
Difference sensitivity is a relative value. Ernst Weber came to the conclusion that we do not perceive differences between objects, but the relation of the difference to the size of the objects being compared.
Table of human feelings and emotions
And I also want to show you a collection of feelings, emotions, states that a person experiences during his life - a generalized table that does not pretend to be scientific, but will help you better understand yourself. The table was taken from the website “Communities of Addicted and Codependent”, author - Mikhail.
All human feelings and emotions can be divided into four types. These are fear, anger, sadness and joy. You can find out what type a particular feeling belongs to from the table.
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And for those who read the article to the end. The purpose of this article is to help you understand your feelings and what they are. Our feelings largely depend on our thoughts. Irrational thinking is often at the root of negative emotions. By correcting these mistakes (working on our thinking), we can be happier and achieve more in life. There is interesting, but persistent and painstaking work to be done on oneself. You are ready?
This might interest you:
Women's anger - lack of love
Do you want to know the truth about yourself or those around you? Do you want to understand what drives you every second of your life? Find out about a person’s strongest emotions that determine his habits, behavior, and life.
Pride is the strongest feeling, expressed in the thirst for self-respect. It can lift you to unattainable heights, it can throw you into the very abyss. With her you can bloom like a flower of paradise, but with her you can wither. In different social circles it evokes different responses: in high circles, in a sports environment, in business - it can generate a feeling of respect for a person; among ordinary people, people of the orthodox persuasion - can cause a range of feelings from pity to open hostility. Currently being actively promoted. Color – red.
Anger is a blinding feeling that drives a person into a frenzy due to obvious injustice towards him, the impossibility of eliminating this injustice. Anger has two shades: the first is destructive (it can cause harm to the person himself, others, even murder); the second is constructive - if in the process of experiencing an emotion a positive result is obtained (here we can give a vivid example of the behavior of a mother during the siege of Leningrad: a mother and a young child are in a village not far from the city, through which a railway track runs. A train is traveling along the railway track at high speed ". To get out of the village to the city for help, you need to get on this train. The train is not going to stop. The mother decides to jump on the rails, blocking the way for the train. The train stops with the grinding of brakes and the driver cursing, the mother and child board the train). The color is fiery.
Laziness is a sore of the soul that determines the entire life of the person who suffers from it. Laziness is comparable to a sticky web, once caught in it, it will take a long and painful time to get out. Laziness gives rise to many minor vices - lying, idleness, irritability, excessive consumption of food. Laziness can be associated with childhood complexes, fear of responsibility, and lack of willpower. It can be treated by force of will, with great desire. Sometimes it is the engine of progress, during which new items are created that simplify life. Color – purple.
Dejection is a depressing feeling of melancholy, accompanied by self-pity and playing the victim. It can be a desired permanent state in lazy people, permanent in people experiencing deep stress. It is treated with medication - from folk valerian to psychotropic drugs; mentally – from undergoing training to contacting specialists; spiritually - by transferring experiences into the realm of mystical experience. Non-standard healing methods with questionable results - alcohol, illegal drugs, numerous relationships with partners with questionable moral principles. Color – pale blue.
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Sensory disorders
1. Sensory hypopathy is a disorder of sensitivity in such a way that both weak and strong stimuli are felt weakly.
2. Sensory hyperpathy is a sharp increase in the intensity of sensations when exposed to weak stimuli.
3. Paresthesia is sensations without stimulus (numbness, tingling).
Adaptation, synesthesia, sensitization
Adaptation means that under the influence of the analyzers’ adaptation to the current stimuli, their sensitivity changes. It can occur in two directions: increasing and decreasing sensitivity.
Adaptation manifests itself in all types of sensations. It is especially noticeable in the areas of vision, smell, skin sensations and taste; less pronounced in the hearing area. For example, we need time to get used to bright sunlight after a dark room. Or you’ve noticed that if you spend some time in a room with an unpleasant smell, you won’t be able to smell it in the future.
Sensitization is an increase in the sensitivity of analyzers under the influence of internal (mental) factors. Caused by the interaction of different analyzers. Under certain conditions, it entails an increase in the sensitivity of one of the senses under the influence of the simultaneous functioning of the other. For example, the feeling of cold increases auditory and visual sensitivity, while high temperature and stuffy atmosphere lead to their decrease.
The phenomenon of compensation (reimbursement) often occurs. People suffering from a certain illness (for example, blindness) can compensate for this by increasing the abilities of another sense organ (hearing becomes more sensitive).
Synesthesia is the occurrence, under the influence of stimulation of one analyzer, of a sensation characteristic of other analyzers. You don't see this phenomenon often. An example is the many composers who had “colored” hearing (high sounds are most often recognized as “light”, and low sounds as “dark”.)
Opium
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Not opium - opium. Feeling aroused while exchanging gazes with anyone. Eye contact produces a great surge of energy. This feeling can be either pleasant or not very pleasant. For example, if you see a person as a threat, the feeling will be unpleasant. And if we are talking about a pretty girl, then such a look will most likely bring pleasure to both you and her.
