With a style that is both detailed and accessible, this new text from Johannes Zanker provides students with a solid understanding of how our sensory and perceptual systems operate, and interact with a dynamic world. It not only explains the scientific mechanisms involved, but discusses the costs and benefits of these mechanisms within an evolutionary, functional framework, to encourage important questions such as: What is a given sensory mechanism needed for? What kind of problem can it solve and what are its limitations? How does the environment determine how senses operate? How does action affect and facilitate perception?

This unique, interdisciplinary framework allows students to see perceiving and acting as embedded in particular environments and directs them to think about the functional nature of these systems. The overall effect is an especially readable, authoritative text on Sensation, Perception and Action that really brings this fascinating topic to life.