aistitieto

Aistitieto is a Finnish term that refers to information obtained through the senses. It denotes the content of perception—the data that sensory organs transmit to the brain about the external world and the body's state.

The main modalities are vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, together with proprioceptive and vestibular feedback. In ordinary use, aistitieto becomes the experienced objects, events, and spatial relations that populate our awareness.

In philosophy and epistemology, aistitieto is considered a primary source of empirical knowledge, but it is not guaranteed to be true. Perception can be shaped by attention, expectations, context, and cognitive biases, and it may involve illusions or hallucinations.

Neuroscience describes perception as a process in which sensory signals are encoded by neurons and integrated across cortical areas. Multisensory processing combines information from different senses to produce a coherent percept of a scene.

Practically, aistitieto affects education, design, and human–computer interaction, guiding how information is presented and interpreted. Understanding its limitations helps improve safety, communication, and usability in everyday technologies and experimental settings.

The word stems from Finnish aisti (sense) and tieto (knowledge or information).