Sensation is a tool for a person to perceive himself and the world around him. All living beings have the ability to sense certain phenomena. However, only a person can realize this, determine the nature of his feelings and talk about them. What is the concept of “sensation”? What are the stages of its occurrence, and what types of them distinguish in psychology? All this will be discussed further.
So, sensation is an ordinary mental process, which is (unconscious or conscious) the product of the central nervous system, arising under the influence of stimuli (external and internal).
As a physical process, it can be explained by the body’s sensitivity to sensory environmental influences. With the help of various receptors, a person perceives information about his internal state, as well as about the external world.
In addition, sensation is also a physiological process in which stimulation of the receptors gives rise to a nerve impulse. The latter, in turn, is transmitted to the necessary parts of the brain, where the reception and analysis of the reaction of the stimulus takes place.
The system of classification of sensations in psychology consists of three groups:
proprioceptive, exteroceptive and interoceptive. The proprioceptive sensation reflects the movement of the body in space by receptors in the vestibular apparatus and muscles. Exteroceptive gives a description of the properties of the outside world, thanks to receptors on the body (taste, hearing, eyesight, smell, tactile and skin sensations). So, to know the taste, you need to eat something, and to get acquainted with the subject - touch it. Interoceptive occurs with irritation of receptors in internal tissues and organs and speaks of their condition.
There are also conscious and unconscious sensations. The first include significant conscious experiences, which sometimes even indicate unusual abilities of a person. These include the feeling of deja vu - a state in which one feels that a similar situation has already happened, but this has nothing to do with a specific moment from the past. This phenomenon is very common in people, but it is impossible to artificially cause it, and it happens extremely rarely. The reasons for its appearance were not found, but suggest that this happens due to the work of the part of the brain that is responsible for perception and memory.
Typically, deja vu evokes a feeling of unreality. Sometimes it seems that it could just be a dream, but it happens that a similar phenomenon can be perceived as a prediction of the future or as a memory of the “past life”. In general, this phenomenon is difficult to describe, and a typical reaction for a person will be its correlation with any recent past.
Unconscious sensations include those that occur during sleep, with a decrease in the general level of awareness, as well as in the form of intuitive feelings (intuition).
Based on this, we can say that sensation is a many-sided specific concept. It describes phenomena that occur at different levels of perception and have different qualities, intensity (aggravation and dullness) and duration.
