Question

2. How does the body make the distinction between A. different modalities? B. Different intensity? C. Different duration?

Answer 1

A.Each modality is sensed by different receptors, e.g. heat by Thermo receptors, pressure by propriocepters,so stimulus of different receptors by different sensory modalities helps are differentiate between different modalities.

B.intensity can be encoded in two ways - a) frequency coding, where the firing rate of sensory neurons increases with increased intensity and b) population coding where the number of primary afferents responding increases with increasing area stimulated.

C. Different duration is simply differentiated by the duration to which the receptors are stimulated.