
Sensory stimulation is the response to input from our environment by one or more of our five senses:
- visual (seeing)
- auditory (hearing)
- tactile (touching)
- gustatory (tasting)
- olfactory (smelling)
What is sensory stimulation and how does it work?
Sensory stimulation is the activation of one or more of our five senses: Seeing (visual): When light passes through your cornea (transparent eye surface) to your pupil (the opening to the inside of your eye).
What is the sense of smell?
Olfaction is the term mainly referred to as the sense of smell. What are the Sense Organs? Sense organs are the specialized organs composed of sensory neurons, which help us to perceive and respond to our surroundings. There are five sense organs – eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin.
What is an example of a sense organ?
Receptors are often housed in a sense organ, a specialized structure constructed to collect one type of energy particularly well. The eye and the ear are examples of sense organs. The skin may also be considered a sense organ (for the sense of touch).
What is the function of the five senses?
These senses govern our association and our interaction with the environment. We have five sense organs, namely: These five sense organs contain receptors that relay information through the sensory neurons to the appropriate places within the nervous system. The receptors could be classified into two parts viz. the general and special receptors.

What is sensory stimulus?
A sensory stimulus is any event or object that is received by the senses and elicits a response from a person. The stimulus can come in many forms such as light, heat, sound, touch, as well as from internal factors.
What happens when a sense organ receives a stimulus?
Each sense organ reacts to a particular type of stimulus. The sense organ converts the stimulus into a nerve impulse that is sent to the organism's brain to be processed and identified. Human sense organs are the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin—each having its own particular type of receptors.
What is the stimulus for the sensory organ of smell?
Stimulus - Chemical Substances (present in the air) Sensory cells for smell are tiny and covered with a layer of mucus. Chemical substances in the air will dissolve in this layer of mucus and stimulate the cells to produce nerve impulses.
What are the different types of stimuli?
excited by three types of stimuli—mechanical, thermal, and chemical; some endings respond primarily to one type of stimulation, whereas other endings can detect all types.
How do we receive sensory stimulus?
In one, a neuron works with a sensory receptor, a cell, or cell process that is specialized to engage with and detect a specific stimulus. Stimulation of the sensory receptor activates the associated afferent neuron, which carries information about the stimulus to the central nervous system.
What is the stimulus for taste?
The stimuli for taste are chemical substances dissolved in water or other fluids. Taste can be described as four basic sensations, sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, which can be combined in various ways to make all other taste sensations.
How do the tongue react to stimuli?
Specific molecular taste receptors on taste receptor cells located in the taste buds bind taste stimuli. Through complex transduction schemes and synaptic activation of neurons, stimulus information is sent to the brain by peripheral neurons.
What stimulus is a receptor in the eye sensitive to?
The eye is a sense organ containing receptors sensitive to light, intensity and colour.
What happens along the neural pathway when the tongue detects the stimulus?
What happens along the neural pathway when the tongue detects the stimulus? Taste receptor cells in the taste buds of the tongue react to molecules in food, activating nerve cells. Nerve cells transmit taste signals to the brain. The gustatory complex in the brain processes the signals to create perception of taste.
What is the function of the sensory organs in the nervous system?
The main function of the sensory nervous system is to inform the central nervous system about stimuli impinging on us from the outside or within us.
What is the role of sensory receptors?
A sensory receptor is a structure that reacts to a physical stimulus in the environment, whether internal or external. It is a sensory nerve ending that receives information and conducts a process of generating nerve impulses to be transmitted to the brain for interpretation and perception.
What are the 5 sense organs and their functions?
What are the Sense Organs?Five Sense Organs.Eyes – Sight or Ophthalmoception.Ears – Hearing or Audioception.Tongue – Taste or Gustaoception.Nose – Smell or Olfalcoception.Skin – Touch or Tactioception.Other Sense Organs.
Define Deafness.
Deafness is defined as the condition that occurs when a person, partially or completely loses the ability to hear. This condition can be caused eit...
What is Olfaction?
Olfaction is the term mainly referred to as the sense of smell.
What are the Sense Organs?
Sense organs are the specialized organs composed of sensory neurons, which help us to perceive and respond to our surroundings. There are five sens...
What are the Olfactory Organs?
Nose, nasal cavities, mucous membrane and other parts of the respiratory passage involved with the sense of smell are all called the olfactory organs.
Which part of the human ear is responsible for maintaining body balance?
The inner part of the human ear called semicircular canals is responsible for maintaining body balance.
What are the Sense Organs?
Sense organs are specialized organs that help to perceive the world around us. They are an integral part of our lives and it is the only way that enables us to perceive the environment.
Which sense organs contain receptors that relay information through the sensory neurons to the appropriate places within the nervous system?
Ears. Nose. Tongue. Skin. These five sense organs contain receptors that relay information through the sensory neurons to the appropriate places within the nervous system. The receptors could be classified into two parts viz. the general and special receptors.
What is the sense of smell called?
Our olfactory system helps us to perceive different smells. This sense of organ also aids our sense of taste. The sense of smell is also known as olfaction. The olfactory cells tend to line the top of the nasal cavity.
What are the organs of the human body that help us hear?
Ears – Hearing or Audioception. Ears are the auditory sense organs of our body. They help us to perceive sounds. Our auditory system detects vibrations in the air and this is how we hear sounds.
What do chemoreceptors detect?
However, the chemoreceptors in the nose would detect any kind of smell, whereas there are four different types of taste buds and each one can detect different types of tastes like sweetness, sourness, bitterness and saltiness.
How does the tongue help us?
The tongue helps in perceiving various tastes and flavours. The taste buds are present between the papillae on the tongue—these help in sensing different tastes. The senses of smell and taste tend to work together. If one could not smell something, they could not taste it either.
Where are the olfactory cells located?
The olfactory cells tend to line the top of the nasal cavity. On one end, olfactory cells have cilia that project into the nasal cavity and on the other end of the cell, are the olfactory nerve fibres.
What do receptors do when they are stimulated?
Receptors respond to specific sorts of stimulation to transduce energy from the environment into electrical potentials in neurons
What are the sense organs that are transducers?
Receptors are often housed in a sense organ, a specialized structure constructed to collect one type of energy particularly well. The eye and the ear are examples of sense organs.
Why are photoreceptors so sensitive to light?
Photoreceptors are billions of times more sensitive to light than they are to touch. Therefore light is the specific stimulus for photoreceptors. The senses of most animals are optimized. In other words, they are as sensitive as they could possibly be without causing problems due to oversensitivity.
What are magnetoreceptors?
Magnetoreceptors are found in species such as honeybees, mo llusks, hornets, salmon, tuna, turtles, salamanders, and homing pigeons. Receptors for magnetoreception contain magnetite, a mineral which is magnetic itself and therefore responds to magnetic fields. Humans have receptors that contain magnetite.
How did Rob de Ruyter illustrate sensory optimization?
Rob de Ruyter illustrated sensory optimization by embedding a fly in orange wax and monitoring the neurons of its visual system. Ruyter found that neurons in the fly's visual system were so sensitive that they were close to the theoretical limit imposed by their optical system (Flam, 1993).
What is the first link in the sensory chain?
The first link in the chain, for every sensory system, is a specialized type of cell called a sensory receptor.
What is the first step in sensing the world?
The first step in sensing the world is translating energy from the environment into information that can be used by the brain. This process of converting energy from one form to another is called transduction. Every one of our senses starts with transduction; that is how energy of the world gives rise to nerve impulses that encode information ...
