sensation
The human sensation is mainly grounded on the external sensory organs such as the ears, nose, eye, vestibular organs, mouth, and skin, which enhances hearing perception, smell, vision, space alignment, taste, and touch. These sensations are transmitted to the brain where they are interpreted, resulting in perception. Therefore, sensation is how a human body realizes the physical stimulus such as light, heat in the surrounding environment, through the sensory receptors of touch, sight, smell, sound. Simultaneously, perception involves organizing the sensations, interpreting, and understanding the meaning of those sensations. For instance, a sensation could be seeing a red flame, but perception helps know that the flame is hot. In other words, sensation is discerning a stimulus through the sensory receptors, while perception is interpreting the stimuli and giving a response through the effectors in the brain. Through perception, we become conscious of our surroundings. The perception process may occur in two distinct ways: the bottom-up approach, which is based on the fact that perceptions result from the input through our senses or environmental stimuli, and the top-down process, which is primarily influenced by our thoughts, knowledge, and experiences to the stimuli.
In sensation, information about the physical stimuli such as vibrations, pain, pressure, and their properties are detected by the sensory organs or receptors in an organism’s body. The organs contain specialized cells that translate this information and convert it into neural signals or impulses. These impulses are sent to the brain’s cerebral cortex, which consists of layers of neurons with several inputs. These neuron layers microprocess and organize the sensations and thus interpret them in the perception process. For example, the eyes have cone and rod receptors in the retina, which perceive light as it enters. Chemical changes occur in the cells lining the back part of the eye. The cells convey messages to the brain in the form of an action potential in a transduction process. This process creates sensations that enable organisms to detect a smell, light in the darkness, and an individual’s appearance. The cilia in the ear, chemical receptors in the mouth and nose, spindles in the muscles, and receptors of pain in the skin register impulses of sound, taste, smell, pressure, vibrations, and touch. One may get used to a particular smell, sound, or taste after constantly experiencing it, such that you only perceive it upon entering a room for the first time; then, after some time, you no longer detect the physical stimuli. This phenomenon referred to as sensory adaptation
Sensations can be classified into two broad categories: general sensations, which include touch, temperature, pressure, pain, and special senses of taste, vision, smell, and hearing., which relay sensory information to the brain via cranial nerves. Generally, senses are vital organs in our daily life, and they immensely affect the way we think, understand, and view the world around us. Through perception, we can interpret things, identify objects, patterns, and situations.