Sensory Systems Flashcards
Sensation
Allows organisms to react to stimuli
What are the four stages of sensation?
- Reception-detection of stimulus and receptors receive signal
- Transduction-neurons fire action potentials and signals are sent via transduction cascade
- Transmission-signal is sent to the brain to be processed
- Perception-brain processes signal
What are the 5 classes of sensory receptors?
Mechanoreceptors, chemoreceptors, electromagnetic receptors, thermo receptors, and nociceptors
Mechanoreceptors
Respond to touch, vibration, audition, stretch, pressure; Ex: whiskers, ears
Chemoreceptors
Respond to osmolarity, smell, taste; Ex: tongue
Electromagnetic receptors
Respond to electrical current, light, magnetic fields; Ex: eye (senses light waves)
Thermo receptors
Respond to hot and cold; Ex: snakes have infrared vision
Nociceptors
Respond to pain
Perception
Neural representation of the world
Olfaction
Oldest sense; sense of smell; chemo sense; present in bacteria; long range detection of fluid borne molecules
What are examples of parts of the body that detect smell?
Nares (nostrils), antennae, tentacles, olfactory epithelium, echinoderms also can sense smell
What is the pathway of smell?
- Reception: Olfactory receptor cells express olfactory receptors that bind to odorants and each olfactory cell expresses only one type of receptor.
- Transduction: Odorants bind to ORs to trigger action potentials in olfactory receptor cells.
- Transmission: Odor intensity is encoded in how many olfactory cells were stimulated; sent to olfactory processing part of the brain.
- Perception: combination of olfactory cells being stimulated=identification of that specific odor
Odorants
Odors are mixture of chemicals
Vision
Has evolved many times; sight; an electromagnetic sense
Example of eyes with no lenses.
Eyespots on flat worms, eyecup, and pinhole eyes