Brain Processing of Senses

Before Video

• Animals need to eat, find safe places to live, reproduce and have offspring, and survive attacks from predators.

• Animals can detect danger with their senses, such as smelling a predator or feeling if something is so hot it will burn them. Animals can also see and hear mates and they can find food with their senses too.

• Animals detect things with their senses. Their nervous system sends the information to their brain and their brain decides what action to take based on the information.

• Reaction time is the amount of time it takes for a sensory receptor to send a signal to the brain through the nervous system, for that signal to be processed in the brain, and for your brain to send a signal back that causes a response, such as pulling your hand away from something slimy.

• An instinct is a response an animal makes to an environmental stimulus that is present at birth. It is something they are born knowing and therefore does not need to be learned.

After Video

• Animals have many different kinds of senses. Some that are in the video are the tarantula’s sense of touch, the snake's sense of smell, the frog’s hearing, and the honeybee’s ability to detect earth's magnetic field.

• The path starts with one of your senses detecting something. When this happens, a signal is sent through the nervous system to the brain. The brain processes the information and then decides on the action to take. It then sends a signal through the nervous system to the body part to take action. This entire process takes a split second to complete.

• Animals learn to use their senses as they grow and develop, but they are also born with instinctual responses to input from their senses.

• An animal’s reaction time can be affected by many factors – if it’s sick, tired, sleepy, hungry, or scared. It would matter to an animal’s survival because if they are too slow they might be eaten by a predator, starve or not be able to find a mate.

• Izzy’s reactions were due to the increased adrenaline in his body, which helped to speed up his reaction time so he could either run away faster, or fight strongly against whoever was attacking him. His reaction was a "fight or flight" reaction, which helps him survive threatening situations.

• Yes, it is possible! Your brain will create nerve pathways specifically for repetitive actions. It's true that practice can make perfect!

• Occasionally an extremely quick or extremely slow catch may not be accurate of our reaction times. The more data you collect, the more accurate your results will be. Scientists do experiments multiple times for accuracy. Also, one experiment does not prove your idea to be correct, it simply provides evidence to support it. The more evidence you collect, the stronger your claim.