BCS 151: Perception and Action

Cross-listed: CVS/PSY 151
Prerequisites: BCS 110 or BCS 111
Offered: Fall

Required or recommended for:

BCS Majors: This course is one of three core courses and is required for the concentration.

About this course:

All our contact with the world around us depends on our senses of sight, balance, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. This course will explore each of these sensory systems, showing how their biology shapes our perceptual experience of reality. The course will emphasize the sense of sight primarily and hearing secondarily, since we have the most thorough understanding of these senses. An important theme in the course is that our sensory systems play a crucial role in the execution of coordinated movements of our bodies, as we navigate in and interact with the environment.

The course assumes some introductory knowledge of the organization and function of the nervous system, and the ways in which we think about cognitive processes. *Students who have not taken BCS 110 or BCS 111 but who think they may be adequately prepared for the course should consult with the instructor.