Australasian Science: Australia's authority on science since 1938

Articles related to sensory perception

Browse: Smell and Taste Receptors in the Heart
Credit: George Peters/iStockphoto
Cover Story: Why Our Brain Craves Random Noise
John L. Bradshaw
Sensory deprivation, dreams, hallucinations and the detection of familiar patterns in clouds and repetitive sounds reveal our brain’s determination to make meaning from random noise.
Smell and taste disorders compromise the health of children.
Feature: Smell & Taste Disorders in Children
David Laing
The rate of taste disorders in children exceeds World Health Organisation guidelines, and combined with smell disorders compromises the nutritional health of a significant proportion of young Australians.
Credit: iStockphoto
Feature: Dead Hands and Phantoms
Lee Walsh, Janet Taylor and Simon Gandevia
Recent studies have highlighted how central signals in the brain can change our sensation of the position and movement of joints, and how phantom limbs form when sensory information is lost.
Feature: What We Can Learn from Pickpockets
Jack Brooks
Scientists are using the perceptual trickery of pickpockets and magicians as a new tool to study perceptual processing in the brain.
Credit: MN National Guard
Feature: Cheerleaders Make Fools of Our First Impressions
Daniel Carragher
The “cheerleader effect” ­– the observation that people appear more attractive when they are in a group – reveals some quirks about how the brain processes complicated visual information.
Neuropsy: Wired for Sound?
Tim Hannan
A new study proposes a biological cause for misophonia – the pathological hatred of sounds.
 Neuropsy: Seeing Is Believing
Tim Hannan
Illusory pattern perception is associated with a belief in conspiracy theories.