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Modern Techniques in Neuroscience Research pp 1211–1241Cite as

Psychophysical Methods

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Abstract

When Fechner (1860/1966) introduced the new transdisciplinary research program of “Psychophysik”,his goal was to present a scientific method of studying the relations between body and mind, or, to put it more precisely, between the physical and phenomenal worlds. The key idea underlying Fechner’s psychophysics was that body and mind are just different reflections of the same reality. From an external, objective viewpoint we speak of processes in the brain (i.e., of bodily processes). Considering the same processes from an internalized, subjective viewpoint, we can speak of processes of the mind. In suggesting that processes of the brain are directly reflected in processes of the mind, Fechner anticipated one of the main goals of modern neuroscience, which is to establish correlations between neuronal (objective) and perceptual (subjective) events.

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Authors
  1. Walter H. Ehrenstein
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  2. Addie Ehrenstein
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Musculoskeletat Research, National Institute for Working Life, Petrus Laestadius väg, 90713, Umeå, Sweden

    Uwe Windhorst  & Håkan Johansson  & 

  2. Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Department of Physiology and Biophysics Faculty of Medicine, The University of Calgary, 333 Hospital Drive N.W., Calgary, Alberta, T2N 4N1, Canada

    Uwe Windhorst

  3. Zentrum Physiologie und Pathophysiologie, Universität Göttingen, Humboldtallee 23, 37073, Göttingen, Germany

    Uwe Windhorst

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ehrenstein, W.H., Ehrenstein, A. (1999). Psychophysical Methods. In: Windhorst, U., Johansson, H. (eds) Modern Techniques in Neuroscience Research. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58552-4_43

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58552-4_43

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-63643-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-58552-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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