Biology of Perceptual Systems

Handbook of Perception, Volume III: Biology of Perceptual Systems reviews the literature on the biological aspects of human perception, with emphasis on perceptual systems and elements of sensory physiology. This volume is organized into 19 chapters and begins with a discussion of energy transduction, detection, and discrimination, along with the properties of neurons alone and as conjoined in nets. The focus then shifts to psychogenesis, the relatively new field of ethology, and the natural diversity and evolutionary divergence of sensory systems. The chapters that follow examine the genetics of behavior, the facts and theories about the way in which animals and men construct patterned stimulation of receptors into significant objects, and the structure and function of sensory systems on which vertebrates depend for their construction of the varieties of experience. The book methodically introduces the reader to chemoreception, tasting and smelling, cutaneous mechanoreception (of position, velocity, transients), active texture perception, mechanisms of spatial orientation and of motion in space, thermoreception, vision, and audition. In almost every case the underlying physiological mechanisms are related to the psychophysical or perceptual observations. This book is a valuable resource for psychologists, biologists, and natural scientists, as well as for those who are interested in the biology of human perception.