perceive

Perceive means to become aware of or to recognize something through the senses, or to come to realize or interpret something. Perception is the mental process that interprets sensory information to form an experience and understanding of the surrounding world.

Sensation is the detection of stimuli by sensory organs, while perception involves organizing and interpreting those signals. Perception integrates bottom-up information from sensory input with top-down expectations, prior knowledge, attention, and context. Gestalt principles describe how people tend to organize sensory input into coherent wholes.

Neuroscience explains perception in terms of neural processing. Sensory receptors transduce energy into neural signals that travel to primary sensory cortices (such as the visual cortex) through relay structures like the thalamus. Multisensory integration combines information from different senses, enabling more robust and flexible perception. Perception develops through childhood and can change with experience, training, or aging.

Perception is subject to errors and biases. Illusions reveal the constructive nature of perception, and top-down processing can alter what is perceived. Cultural, linguistic, and individual factors shape interpretation of ambiguous stimuli, and people may perceive the same event differently depending on context and expectations.

Research on perception uses methods such as psychophysics, which links physical stimuli to perceptual responses, along with neuroimaging and electrophysiology to study brain activity. The concept of perceive covers a broad range of experiences, from basic sensory recognition to complex social interpretation, and it remains a central topic in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy.