Perception

Abstract

Humans and other animals perceive with many different sensory modalities, including olfaction, touch, audition, vision, echolocation, proprioception, gustation, and some other senses, depending on different criteria and definitions. Physical objects or material bodies are the basic constituents of the world, at least according to common sense: the world is populated by tables, chairs, trees, mountains, rivers, oceans, and people. The empirical world makes sense to us due to such scene analyses and segregations in different sense modalities: the physical and chemical stimuli on the sensory receptors are ambiguous, and objects can be blurred or hidden. The neuroscience of perception, or sensory neuroscience, is a vast area that studies the physiology and anatomy of the neuronal structures that underlie perception. Very generally, perception begins with sensory inputs from the outside physical world. Information has become a crucial notion in many domains, and it is hard to find a single, satisfying definition.