Progress in Sensory Physiology

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-VII

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2. Visual Hyperacuity

   • G. Westheimer

   Pages 1-30

3. Opioid Peptides and Sensory Function

   • H. W. Kosterlitz, A. T. McKnight

   Pages 31-95

4. Ionic Mechanisms and Behavioral Functions of Presynaptic Facilitation and Presynaptic Inhibition in Aplysia: A Model System for Studying the Modulation of Signal Transmission in Sensory Neurons

   • E. Shapiro, M. Klein, E. Kandel

   Pages 97-137

5. Color Vision: A Review from a Neurophysiological Perspective

   • P. Gouras, E. Zrenner

   Pages 139-179

6. Back Matter

   Pages 181-182

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I fancy that many of you, like myself, have woken up in the night with a "sleeping" arm or leg. It is a very peculiar feeling to have that arm or leg, cold and lifeless, hanging there at your side as if it were something which does not belong to you. In such situations you recover some of the motor functions before the sensory functions, which en­ ables you to move the limb like a pendulum. For a few sec­ onds the arm functions as an artificial limb - a prosthesis without sensors. In general we are not aware of the importance of our sensory organs until we lose them. You do not feel the pressure of your clothes on the skin or the ring on your finger. In the nineteenth century such phenomena generally named adaptation, were studied to a great extent, partic­ ularly in vision, as well as in the so-called lower senses. The question whether sensory adaptation was due to changes in the peripheral sensory receptors or in the central nervous structure remained in general open until the 1920s. Then the development of the electronic arsenal gave us the means to attack the problem by direct observations of the electrical events in the peripheral as well as the central nervous system. But even today there are still some blank areas in our knowledge of adaptation.

• Sehen
• adaptation
• central nervous system
• nervous system
• neurons
• physiology
• skin

• Zoologisches Institut der Universität München, München 2, Germany

  Hansjochem Autrum

• Department of Physiology, University of Northern Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA

  Eduard Roy Perl

• Physiologisches Institut der Universität, Kiel, Germany

  Robert F. Schmidt

• Fysiologiska Institutionen II, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm 60, Sweden

  David Ottoson

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