View source for Transduction (psychology)

{{Other uses|Transduction (disambiguation){{!}}Transduction}}

'''Transduction''' in general is the transportation or transformation of something from one form, place, or concept to another. In [[psychology]], transduction refers to reasoning from specific cases to general cases, typically employed by children during their development. The word has many specialized definitions in varying fields. Furthermore, transduction is defined as what takes place when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into encoded neural signals sent to the central nervous system.<ref name="autogenerated1">Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D. T., & Wegner, D. M. (2010). Psychology. (2nd ed.). New York: Worth Pub.</ref>

== Sensation and perception ==
The five senses, vision, hearing, touch and taste/smell allow physical stimulation around us to turn to neural stimulation which is sent to the brain. Vision is from light reflecting off objects around us, hearing is from the vibrations caused by change in air pressure, touch is from the signals in our skin feeling the pressure of objects touching us and taste/smell is from the molecules in the air or in our saliva that let us know what we are smelling or tasting.<ref name="autogenerated1"/> Cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) plays an important role in visual transductions. This fact was well rooted when Fesenko demonstrated that this nucleotide cGMP was able to directly regulate a new assort of membrane channels now called the 
nucleotide-gated cation channels. This was how the route from the light to a change in the rod receptor membrane conductance was conclusively organized in the twentieth century and has been represented in more insightful detail over the past ten years.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uyDv6XbYlVoC&pg=PR2 |title=Visual Transduction And Non-Visual Light Perception - Joyce Tombran-Tink, Colin J. Barnstable - Google Books |via=[[Google Books]]|date= |accessdate=2014-01-22}}</ref>

== Etymology ==
The [[etymological]] origin of the word transduction has been [[Attested language|attested]] since the 17th century (during the flourishing of [[Neo-Latin]], Latin vocabulary words used in scholarly and scientific contexts<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Neo-Latin|encyclopedia=The American College Dictionary|publisher=Random House|year=1966}}</ref>) from the Latin noun transductionem, derived from transducere/traducere<ref>{{OEtymD|transduction|accessdate=2012-07-31}}</ref> "to change over, convert," a verb which itself originally meant "to lead along or across, transfer," from trans- "across" + ducere "to lead."<ref>{{OEtymD|traduce|accessdate=2012-07-31}}</ref><ref>{{OEtymD|transducer|accessdate=2012-07-31}}</ref>

The verb form of this term in English, transduce, was created by [[back-formation]] in the 20th century.<ref>{{OEtymD|transduce|accessdate=2012-07-31}}</ref>

== In physiology as relates to psychology ==
[[Transduction (physiology)|Transduction in physiology]] also has a meaning that relates to psychology when discussing the biological origins of the mind: that is, transduction meaning the transportation of stimuli to the [[central nervous system]], when physical signals from the environment are transformed into electrical or neural signals.<ref>Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert, Daniel M. Wegner, Psychology, 2nd edition, Worth Publishers, 2010.</ref> [[Receptor cell]]s produce an electrical change in response to a physical [[stimulus (physiology)|stimulus]].

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://www.psychvarsity.com/Transduction-Psychology Transduction in Psychology - Transforming your knowledge]

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[[Category:Psychological theories]]