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.

Handbook of Perception, Volume X: Perceptual Ecology, deals with perceptual aspects of the study of interaction of persons with their environment. The book is organized into six parts. Part I examines an ecological approach to the perceptual systems and cultural differences in perception. Part II is devoted to impaired perception and action. It includes studies on perception by the deaf and blind, and outlines the intellectual principles necessary for understanding sensory aids. Part III on aesthetics covers central problem of aesthetic theories and the generation and measurement of aesthetic forms. Part IV on architecture, music, art, and cinema discusses the perceptual aspects of architecture; the psychology of music; and the perception of art and motion pictures. Part V deals with the role of olfactory hedonics in perfumery and the assessment and abatement of noxious odors; and food habits, gastronomy, and analysis of flavors and foods. Part VI focuses on parapsychology. It reviews experimental evidence on telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis in order to assess the status of parapsychology and show why it is paradoxy, outside of accepted opinion, after some 100 years of psychic research.

Neuronal coding of information coming from external and internal environments and transducted by sensory receptors constitutes a basic biophysical problem. After the coding phase, such information orients organism responses, shaping complex behavioural patterns. The characteristics of both neurons (interneurons with re-entering connections, latency times, filter bandwidth with respect to input signals, logic operations on multiple convergent signals) and neuron nets (reverberating nets, feedback/feed-forward connections, oscillations due to endogenous activity patterns) are important for coding mechanisms. Neuronal coding is implied also in the higher phases of information processing linked to consciousness, when neuronal activity patterns are related to perceptual mental representations.

With a style that is both detailed and accessible, this new text from Johannes Zanker provides students with a solid understanding of how our sensory and perceptual systems operate, and interact with a dynamic world. It not only explains the scientific mechanisms involved, but discusses the costs and benefits of these mechanisms within an evolutionary, functional framework, to encourage important questions such as: What is a given sensory mechanism needed for? What kind of problem can it solve and what are its limitations? How does the environment determine how senses operate? How does action affect and facilitate perception? This unique, interdisciplinary framework allows students to see perceiving and acting as embedded in particular environments and directs them to think about the functional nature of these systems. The overall effect is an especially readable, authoritative text on Sensation, Perception and Action that really brings this fascinating topic to life.

This book provides a chapter-by-chapter update to and reflection on of the landmark volume by J.J. Gibson on the Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979). Gibson’s book was presented a pioneering approach in experimental psychology; it was his most complete and mature description of the ecological approach to visual perception. Perception as Information Detection commemorates, develops, and updates each of the sixteen chapters from Gibson’s volume. The book brings together some of the foremost perceptual scientists in the field, from the United States, Europe, and Asia, to reflect on Gibson’s original chapters, expand on the key concepts discussed and relate this to their own cutting-edge research. This connects Gibson’s classic with the current state of the field, as well as providing a new generation of students with a contemporary overview of the ecological approach to visual perception. Perception as Information Detection is an important resource for perceptual scientists as well as both undergraduates and graduates studying sensation and perception, vision, cognitive science, ecological psychology, and philosophy of mind.