L6: Hearing, taste and smell Flashcards
What is audition?
Sense of detecting sound/hearing.
What is the Cochlea?
A coiled structure in the inner ear that converts vibrational energy into waves of fluid.
what is the optic chasm?
Located immediately inferior to the hypothalamus, this is where the optic nerves cross and is important for vision.
What are the 3 main Ossicles and what do they aid with?
1) Malleus
2) Incus
3) stapes
They are located in the inner ear and amplify sound.
What is the organ of corti?
Located in the cochlea in the inner ear, has 3 rows of hair cells and is the receptor organ for hearing.
What is the superior olive?
Nuclei in the brainstem where medial neurons respond to a difference in arrival time.
What is the Trapezoid body?
Part of the brainstem just before the superior olive, where neurons respond to loudness and help with localisation.
What does the Basilar membrane do?
Located in the organ of Corti in the cochlea (in the inner ear), it sorts frequencies.
What does the Tectorial membrane do?
This is the top layer of the organ of Corti, aids in hearing restoration.
What causes Sensorineural hearing loss?
Either damage to the auditory nerve or damage to hair cells in the cochlea.
What is the Heschl’s Gyrus?
The primary auditory cortex within the sylvian fissure in the temporal lobe.
What is ‘Tonotopic’?
The spatial arrangement of where in the brain different frequencies are processed.
What is Olfaction?
Where chemosignals are translated into nerve impulses, allows for differentiation of over 10,000 smells. These receptors need to be replaced every 60 days.
What is Chemoreception?
The oldest sensory system (500 million years old), the detection of specific chemicals where taste and olfaction work together to analyse stimuli creating ‘flavour’.
What is the Olfactory epithelium?
Receptor surface for smell, each olfactory receptor cell has a short thick dendrite that projects into a mucous layer (olfactory mucosa).
What is the Pyriform cortex?
Located at the junction of the Temporal and Frontal lobes, it is the key brain area involved in processing and coding olfactory information.
What is the olfactory bulb?
Neural structure at the front of the brain. Sends olfactory information to the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus.
What are Mitral cells?
An output channel of axons from the olfactory bulb to a range of areas in the forebrain.
What are Glomerali?
Small blood vessels.
What is the olfactory nerve?
The first cranial nerve and part of the automatic nervous system. It enables sense of smell.
What is mucosa?
a mucous layer in which chemicals in the air dissolve and interact with hairs that then sends information to the olfactory epithelium.
What is Gustation?
Sense of taste.
What are Papillae?
Bumps on the tongue that contain taste buds and help us to grip food.
What are taste buds?
A sense organ for taste, there are 50-150 receptor cells per bud, half of these humans lose by the age of 20.
What are the 5 types of taste bud?
1) Sweet
2) sour
3) salty
4) bitter
5) Unami
What are Cilia?
Small, thin hair structures at the end of olfactory receptor cells (10-20 on each).
What is the Gustatory nerve?
formed of 3 cranial nerves, it sends fibers from taste buds to the brain stem.
What is Insula?
The primary gustatory region located in the lateral sulcus, also contributes to sensory and affective processing and high-level cognition.
