The Sensory System

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The Sensory System...

Nervous System 2:

The sensory system is vital for survival, growth, development, and the experience of bodily pleasure. Smelling smoke, we interpret a potentially life threatening situation. Seeing a person smile and hearing we did a great job bolsters our self-esteem. Feeling someone's hands stroking our body gives us a feeling of pleasure and sensual delight.

Sense perception depends on sensory receptors that respond to various stimuli. When a stimulus triggers an impulse in a receptor, the action potentials travel to the cerebral cortex, where they are processed and interpreted. Only after this occurs is a particular sensation perceived. Some senses, such as pain, touch, pressure, and proprioception, are widely distributed in the body. These are called general senses. Other senses, such as taste, smell, hearing, and sight, are called special senses because their receptors are localized in a particular area. Other senses such as taste, smell, hearing, and sight, are called special senses because their receptors are localized in a particular area.

SENSORY COMPONENTS

The two components of sensory experience are reception and perception. Sensory reception is the process of receiving data from the internal or external environment through the senses and includes:

Visual (seeing)

Auditory (hearing)

Olfactory (smell)

Gustatory (taste)

Tactile (touch)

Sensory perception is the conscious process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting data from the senses into meaningful information. This process is influenced by intensity, size, or shape, as well as by past experiences, knowledge, and attitudes. Some sense receptors the way in which a particular sensation is perceived depends on where it is interpreted in the brain.

Nearly everyone is familiar with sensory adaptation in the sense of smell. A particular odor becomes unnoticed after a short time even though the odor molecules are still present in the air because the system quickly adapts to the continued stimulation.

GENERAL SENSES

General senses are found throughout the body. The visceral organs control these senses with the skin, muscles, and joints. The general senses include:

Touch

Pressure

Proprioception

Temperature

Pain

TOUCH AND PRESSURE - as a group, the receptors for touch and pressure are sensitive to forces that deform or displace tissues. They are widely distributed in the skin. Three of the receptors involved in touch and pressure are free nerve endings, Meissner's corpuscles, and pacinian corpuscles. They are important in sensing objects in continuous contact with our skin. Meissner's corpuscles lie just beneath the epidermis and sense light touch stimuli. Pacinian corpuscles are deeper in the dermis and are sensitivity to heavy pressure.

TEMPERATURE - the temperature receptors lie directly under the skin and are widely dispersed throughout the body. The sense of temperature is stimulated by cold and heat receptors. There are many more cold receptors than heat receptors. The degree of stimulation depends on the number of each type of receptor stimulated. These receptors are strongly stimulated by an abrupt change in temperature. Extremes in temperature stimulate pain receptors. Below 10 degrees C, pain receptors produce a freezing sensation. As the temperature increases above this measurement, pain impulse cease but cold receptors begin to be stimulated. At temperatures about 25 degrees C, heat receptors begin to be stimulated and cold receptors fade out. Finally, as temperatures approach 45 degrees C, heat receptors fade out and pain receptors are stimulated to produce a burning sensation.

Your first mini assignment will be to complete the conversions and tell me what the above Centigrade measurements would calculate out into Fahrenheit measurements.

A person determines gradiations in temperatures by the degree of stimulation of each type of receptor. Extreme cold and extreme heat feel almost the same-both are painful-because the pain receptors are being stimulated. Thermoreceptors are strongly stimulated by abrupt changes in temperature and then fade after a few seconds or minutes.

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