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A sensory system consists of sensory neurons (including the sensory receptor cells), neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception and interoception. Commonly recognized sensory systems are those for vision , hearing , touch , taste , smell , balance and visceral sensation.
Stimulus modality, also called sensory modality, is one aspect of a stimulus or what is perceived after a stimulus. For example, the temperature modality is registered after heat or cold stimulate a receptor. Some sensory modalities include: light, sound, temperature, taste, pressure, and smell.
External receptors that respond to stimuli from outside the body are called exteroreceptors. [4] Exteroreceptors include chemoreceptors such as olfactory receptors and taste receptors, photoreceptors (), thermoreceptors (temperature), nociceptors (), hair cells (hearing and balance), and a number of other different mechanoreceptors for touch and proprioception (stretch, distortion and stress).
Many of the sensory stimuli are categorized by the mechanics by which they are able to function and their purpose. Sensory receptors that are present within the body typically are made to respond to a single stimulus. Sensory receptors are present all throughout the body, and they take a certain amount of a stimulus to trigger these receptors.
Stimulation of sensory receptors in the esophagus result in sensations felt in the throat when swallowing, vomiting, or during acid reflux. Sensory receptors in pharynx mucosa, similar to touch receptors in the skin, sense foreign objects such as mucus and food that may result in a gag reflex and corresponding gagging sensation.
Tactile corpuscles or Meissner's corpuscles are a type of mechanoreceptor discovered by anatomist Georg Meissner (1829–1905) and Rudolf Wagner. [1] [2] This corpuscle is a type of nerve ending in the skin that is responsible for sensitivity to pressure.
Sensory receptors can receive stimuli from outside the body, as in touch receptors found in the skin or light receptors in the eye, as well as from inside the body, as in chemoreceptors and mechanoreceptors. When a stimulus is detected by a sensory receptor, it can elicit a reflex via stimulus transduction.
Principal steps of sensory processing. In physiology, transduction is the translation of arriving stimulus into an action potential by a sensory receptor. It begins when stimulus changes the membrane potential of a sensory receptor. A sensory receptor converts the energy in a stimulus into an electrical signal. [1]