Sensory Perception - Essay Example

With regards to my grandfather’s farm, I had only recently traveled back to this place within the past few months. As a child I had spent many a happy summer as well as interspersed individual weekends playing around the familiar sights that the farm had to offer. As such, the setting itself was one which provided me with a great many happy memories that were, and continue to be, seared on my memory. When I recently viewed the farm again, a virtual flood of memories came back to me. Many of these memories seemed as if they were happening at the exact moment or merely a few minutes prior to me seeing the old sights again.

It was as if I was transported, via the sense of sight, to a different dimension in which time and the long absence from the farm that had intervened, meant little if anything as it all seemed so close and personal rather than removed and distant. The familiarity and the positive connotations of the sights doubtless had a lot to do with such an interpretation. Similarly, my old neighborhood has had a similar visual perceptional effect on me. Due to the different perspective that I had when I was younger, the sights themselves seemed as something a bit foreign.

Everything was much smaller than it had been; some things seemed unnaturally out of place or entirely different. In this way, the sense of sight and my perception thereof were seemingly arguing with the memories that I had etched into my mind. This disjuncture between memory and reality was a unique aspect of my visual memory that I had never before experienced and was a unique and different feeling. Finally, with respect to my primary school and the effects that visual perception have had on me once I have been back to visit such a place, the perception of sight was one in this case that sought to bring forward a host of other emotional feelings and worries that were unique to that particular time of my life.

For instance, as I walked the halls, I no longer felt the sense of insecurity or judgment that I had so strongly felt before. While my eyes acquainted themselves with the classrooms with the loved and hated teachers I had had, the level to which sight was providing an entirely alternate reality to me was something unique that I cannot quite describe yet I know precisely how it felt to experience. Each of these experiences has helped to inform the author with regards to the various memories, feelings, and emotions that exist within the context of the sights that have herein been represented.

Due to the fact that each of the five senses is directly linked to strong memories within the brain, the exemplification of but a simple sight, sound, smell, or touch is enough to bring back a flood of memories to the individual within the given experience. As has been detailed, the thought process that takes place a a result of this perception is not one that is always voluntary; rather, something as simple as seeing an object or a group of objects that have long since been absent from the life of the viewer can begin something akin to a mental chain reaction that culminates in distinctive memory patterns and understandings of what things may have changed in life since the last time that such an object or group of objects was objectively