We learn about the world around us through our senses. We often talk about the five senses, but most neurologists agree that humans have at least nine different senses. These include seeing (vision), hearing (audition), taste (gustation), smell (olfaction). Touch (physical feeling) can be broken down into at least five distinct senses including pressure on the skin (somatosensation), feelings of hot and cold (thermoreception), pain (nociception), the perception of balance (equilibrioception), and an awareness of where parts of the body are located in space (proprioception). Each sense is actually a complex “sensory system.” A sensory system is a group of cells that work together to bring a particular kind of information to the brain. It is comprised of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and those parts of the brain responsible for processing the information. The visual sensory system, for example, gathers and interprets information about light. |
|||||||||||||||
