Modern Discoveries in Neuroscience... And What They Reveal About You (Collection)

10. The organization of perceptual qualities

Despite the subjective nature of perception, there are several ways to assess how the brain organizes a given quality. In general, understanding the organization of a perceptual category depends on determining how the quality behaves when a relevant stimulus parameter is systematically varied. For example, perceptual qualities such as lightness, brightness, or color can be evaluated in terms of the least amount of light energy that can be seen as the wavelength of a stimulus is varied, as the background intensity is altered, as a pattern is changed, or as some other aspect of the stimulus is permutated. Another approach is to determine the least noticeable differences between stimuli that can be perceived, ...