Biological Influences Essay Example

Biological Influences Essay Example Biological Influences Paper Biological Influences Paper Of the four experiments that I conducted were presented, I decided to conduct experiments 1, 2 and 4. In experiment 1, I would rate the coarseness of the sandpaper as 7 (very coarse) but after the second time that I rubbed it, my fingers felt as if they were already numb from the coarseness of the sandpaper. In experiment 2, the taste of the fresh water surprised me because it tasted a little sweet, just like the taste of the cup with sugar on it. I tasted the freshwater a couple of times more and it tasted â€Å"normal† after five drinking. In the last experiment, the thought of submerging my hands into a hot bowl of water was actually scary so it took a few encouragements to do it. When I dipped my hands in the two bowls, I could not almost feel the cold water because my mind was preoccupied with the hot water. When the 3 minutes was over, I quickly dipped both hands into the bowl with lukewarm water and interestingly enough, both felt warm. It was if heat was disseminated all throughout the middle bowl. Both hands had a neutral lukewarm feeling. In all the three experiments, adaptation was observed and based from the observations that were gathered form the experiment, adaptation is an innate human ability to cope with the changes in his environment which is triggered by some stimuli. There are actually two types of adaptation in this case. The first one is the sensory adaptation. This kind of adaptation was observed in the first two experiments. Sensory adaptation is most likely felt by our senses- nose, ears, skin, etc. after our receptors has recovered from fatigue (Sensory adaptation, 2001). In the experiments where sensory adaptation occurred, the stimuli were capture/felt by our senses- namely sense of touch and taste. I first â€Å"conditioned† my senses and by doing such, I was able to â€Å"trick† my senses of sensations- whereas, causing them fatigue- when I was about to introduce them to a different stimulus, the after effect was still there. This means to say that the sensations that my receptors were able to gather is stuck in my brain and it still being processed. That is why, when I introduced a new stimulus, it took a little while before my nerves were able to adapt to the new sensations/stimulus. On the other hand, perceptual adaptation was observed in the last experiment that I conducted. Unlike sensory adaptation, perceptual adaptation is only perceived in our mind. It is us who sends a message to the brain if before the stimulus affects us. Hence, perceptual adaptation does not travel through our receptors and nerves but it is directly processed in our brain by external stimuli. (Steen, 2005) Both kinds of adaptations are stimulated by a stimulus and undergo a pathway- it just happened that their pathway is different. In perceptual adaptation, our senses are indirectly responsible for the sensations that our brain is processing whereas in sensory adaptation, sensations travel through our nerves and receptors before our brain processes it. Since there was no direct sensory system on which perceptual adaptation may travel, the brain therefore is the one responsible for it. It directly processes the information even before it can react to an external stimulus. The most prominent system that is involved is the reticular system by which it directs the focus of our attention somewhere else.