Sensory processes and orientation

Abstract

Abstract Before Muller’s (1827) doctrine of specific nerve energies it was thought that each specific environmental event, or stimulus, affected sensory nerves in a manner specific to the type of stimulus. Muller discovered that a given nerve pathway always produces the same type of sensation regardless of its mode of stimulation. Thus light falling upon the eye produces a visual sensation, but so does mechanical stimulation, such as a blow to the eye. If our ear could be attached to the optic nerve, auditory stimulation would then give rise to visual sensation. The sense organ acts as an energy transducer providing quantitative information. The destination of the nerves that relay the sens01y messages determines the qualitative information. The doctrine of specific nerve energies provides a key organizing principle for sensory physiology. It banishes all previous speculations as to the role of sense organs in perception, making it clear that these are primarily transducers of one form of energy to another.