Chapter 1. Our Senses

Short Description

Humans have many senses and these senses are the main manner of receiving and responding to stimuli. The main senses for humans include sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. There is also the vestibular sense which provides sensory information about balance, as well as the kinesthetic sense which provides the body information about position and movement.

Long Description

Senses are integral to survival and navigation in the world. The human brain prioritizes vision and hearing, but all senses interact through a process known as sensory integration. For instance, taste and smell often interact. Human have thousands of taste buds; each bud responds to one of the five basic tastes. Infants are born loving sweet and hating bitter tastes as a means of survival. When individuals smell something, odor molecules are released and stimulates receptors in the nose. Often smell or taste is associated with a specific person or place and shows a strong connection between scent, taste, and memory. The sense of touch is comprised of pressure, warmth, cold, and pain. Pain is our bodies alarm system. Gate control theory suggests that the spinal cord acts as a gate to let in certain signals and block others to modulate the experience of pain. The experience of pain is then processed by the brain.

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