organization

The organization is the sub-step of perception that structures the sensory impressions and generates the first sense. The organization is preceded by the primary sensory impression (the sensation), and then the perception is classified. In neglect, the organization of stimuli on one side of the body is disturbed.

What is the organization?

The process of perception consists of various stages. These include sensation, organization and classification. The sensation corresponds to the physiological processes of stimulus reception in the respective sense organ. The organization is the umbrella term for the first cognitive processing of the perceived stimuli. These first processing processes on a cognitive level combine the individual components into a coherent and coherent overall sensory impression.

The logical connection of the sensory impression is absolutely necessary for the third processing step.It is only thanks to the organization that has taken place beforehand that sensory impressions can have an overriding categorical meaning within the framework of the classification. This allocation of meaning on the basis of organization and subsequent categorization is followed by an assessment of the personal meaning, which enables an interpretation of the stimuli.

Function & task

The organization of perception gives meaning to the primary sensation of the sense organs. The received stimuli are organized into a meaningful shape by the brain. The principle of organization is to create an order out of chaos. The outside world is disordered. However, since humans are supposed to survive in the disordered outer world on the basis of their perception, the perception process in the organization must bring order to the chaos of stimuli in order to provide humans with a logical and understandable whole as a basis for reactions. Orderly things are generally less dangerous than chaotic things. The order of incoming stimuli in the sense of the organization thus has, from an evolutionary biological point of view, a minimization of external sources of danger and ultimately human survival.

Various processes for structuring the individual stimuli take place within the organization, all of which are intended to produce a clearer and coherent overall impression. For this purpose, the organization of perception follows various laws that have proven to be effective in the past and that create a logical connection between individual stimuli for humans.

One of these laws is the law of similair. Similar stimuli or things are structured into common groupings. In contrast, things or stimuli are structured into separate groupings with a difference. In addition to the law of similarity, a law of proximity applies, which marks things or stimuli that are spatially close together as belonging together. In contrast, stimuli or things that are far apart are perceived as independent.

The principle of cohesion and the principle of continuation, which also enable the creation of connections between individual stimuli and things in the environment, are also relevant to the organization.

In addition, the brain organizes the sensations according to the principle of conciseness. This is the overriding principle of the organization, which primarily affects visual perception and divides visually perceived fields into "good" shapes with simple regularities or symmetries.

A final principle of organization is that of texture delimitation. This is understood to mean the formation of shapes or figures on the basis of changes in texture, differences in intensity or different wavelengths. For example, spots have a certain length, color, width and orientation. At the same time, they can be provided with line ends or line crossings.

All these relationships are automatically taken into account when organizing stimuli in order to generate a meaningful overall perception. The aforementioned laws are also known as gestalt laws and make organization the first step in the process of giving meaning in the process of perception.

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Illnesses & ailments

Disturbances in the organization of perception often occur in relation to visual perception and in this case mostly affect children or young people. A disease with a generalized disorder of the perceptual organization is the so-called neglect. An attention disorder is referred to as such, which normally occurs after a half-sided lesion of the brain. After such a lesion, those affected neglect the stimuli on the damaged side, so that the organization is impaired to a meaningful overall picture or no longer functions at all.

If a hemiplegic brain lesion has caused the neglect, several sensory systems are usually affected by the phenomenon. In addition to the visual stimuli on the affected side, the patient can, for example, also neglect body-related stimuli on the corresponding side.

A neglect can result from lesions in different regions of the brain. Typically, the damage only affects one hemisphere of the patient's brain and is mostly located between the parietal, temporal and occipital lobes.

In addition, a neglect occurs in rare individual cases after frontal brain lesions or is caused by subcortical lesions of the putamen or the caudate nucleus in the basal ganglia. Damage to the pulvinars within the thalamus can also lead to neglect and a correspondingly disturbed organization. The causal damage is mostly in regions of the brain known as association areas or secondary receptive cortex fields. The neglect is often associated with anosognosia due to damage to the right parietal lobe.