Smell, Taste and skin Flashcards
Olfactory mucosa
Location of receptor cells
Olfactory receptor neuron
over 350 of them!
- allow for perception of a trillion diff odours!
- receptors send messages to glomeruli
What are smells?
The combination of many different odourant molecules:0
Is smell difficult to study?
Yes
Why is smell difficult to study?
- Chemicals that are very similar in structure can produce different smells
- Some molecules with different structures can sometimes smell the same
What is taste defined as?
It is the correlation between molecular properties of stimuli and effect on body
What are the 5 tastes?
- Sweet
- Salty
- Sour
- Bitter
- Umami (savoury)
What are the bumps on the tongue called?
Papillae
What are the four kinds of papillae?
- Fungiform
- foliate
- Circumvallate
- Filiform
Fungiform papillae
look like mushrooms, located on the sides of tongue
Foliate papillae
Look folded, located at the back of the tongue
Circumvallate papillae
Small mounds, located at the back of tonge
Filiform papillae
- No taste buds
- Located all over the tongue (fuzzy looking)
What is the taste bud?
There are 50-100 taste-sensitive cells in EACH taste bud
What happens when chemicals bind to receptor sites on the taste pore?
Transduction
Where are the neural messages sent from a taste bud?
The brain and stomach
What is a mechanoreceptor?
A cell that responds to pressure
What are the four skin mechanoreceptors?
- Merkel receptor
- Meissner corpuscle
- Ruffini cylinder
- Pacinian corpuscle
Merkel receptor
Near the surface
- they fire as long as there is pressure
Meissner corpuscle
- near the surface
- Fire at the start and end of a stimulus
Ruffini cylinder
- Deeper layer
- detects stretching
Pacinian corpuscle
- deeper layer
- detects vibration and texture
