How Your Brain Sees, Smells, and Decides: Sensation vs Perception

Professor Peterson’s Psychology Classroom · Oct 9, 2026 · 54m · transcript

This episode explains how sensation converts physical stimuli (like light, sound, taste, and smell) into neural signals through transduction and how perception organizes and interprets those signals in different brain areas.

Key topics include sensory thresholds and Weber’s Law, sensory adaptation and attention, bottom‑up vs top‑down processing, and examples of priming, subliminal influence, and the role of smell and taste in social behavior.