Question

Some people report situations in which they were injured but didn't feel any pain until they became aware of their injury. How would you explain this kind of situation in terms of top-down and bottom-up processing?

Answer 1

Processing is just a shorter way to say taking in information, analyzing it, and drawing conclusions or taking action. Processing involves the brain, the body, and emotions. There are two types of processing: top-down and bottom-up. Let's look at our ice cream scenario again. In top-down processing, your brain is active first. You might think, How nice. My friend is offering me ice cream, and I would like some. I should take that from her. I wonder what kind it is. This thought leads to emotions for example happy, excited, grateful, curious and then a response in the body. Bottom-up processing is simply about the process moving in the opposite direction. First comes the response in the body such that eyes see the bowl and contents; nose smells chocolate, pickles, and hot sauce; stomach churns; face grimaces; head turns away. This leads to emotion repulsion, disappointment and the brain's cognition and directive for action thinking, That's nasty, and saying, 'No thank you. As you can see from the chart below, bottom-up processing starts with the body and ends in the brain.People are generally encouraged to think before acting; however, you may have found that sometimes you make good decisions without thinking about them first. For example, if someone offered you your favorite flavor of ice cream, but it was topped with pickles and hot sauce, chances are you'd be able to turn it down right away without first having to give it a thought unless you like that sort of thing. The reason you could reject that ice cream without first having to stop and think is because of a strategy called bottom-up processing.