Teaching Animations

The following animations illustrate basic concepts in psychology. These animations require the Macromedia Flash Player, which is available for free.

Neuroscience

• Parts of a neuron
• Action potentials: How neurons send messages over long distances.
• Neurotransmission: This illustrates the process of communication between neurons.
• Comparison of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems: I thank Janie Wilson from Georgia Southern University for inspiring this animation.
• Neuroanatomy tour: This covers the gross anatomy of the brain as well as functions of each part.

Sensation - Perception

• Threshold: This animation shows how an absolute threshold is determined. A fast, relatively new computer is needed or otherwise the timings may be off.
• Motion parallax as a depth perception cue.
• Benham's top is an illustration of subjective color from a black and white image. Note: This animation doesn't work properly on older computers because the "top" does not spin fast enough. If this doesn't spin fast enough, try making the browser window smaller to speed up the animation.
• Gestalt laws of form perception
• Iconic memory and visual masking: Once again, this one needs a fast computer to display the stimuli at the proper speeds.
• Additive color mixture tutorial: This one is not animated, but it is a tutorial!

Lecture Animations

These animations were designed to supplement lectures. They provide dynamic illustrations of particular phenomena, which will hopefully make teaching certain topics easier.

• Neurotransmission
• Action potentials
• Gestalt principles of form perception
• Short term memory demonstration