<P> The law of specific nerve energies, first proposed by Johannes Peter Müller in 1835, is that the nature of perception is defined by the pathway over which the sensory information is carried . Hence, the origin of the sensation is not important . Therefore, the difference in perception of seeing, hearing, and touch are not caused by differences in the stimuli themselves but by the different nervous structures that these stimuli excite . For example, pressing on the eye elicits sensations of flashes of light because the neurons in the retina send a signal to the occipital lobe . Despite the sensory input's being mechanical, the experience is visual . </P> <P> Here is Müller's statement of the law, from Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen für Vorlesungen, 2nd Ed., translated by Edwin Clarke and Charles Donald O'Malley: </P>

The doctrine of specific nerve energies was proposed by