The Human Skin The Sense of Touch

While your other four senses (sight, hearing, smell, and taste) are located in specific parts of the body, your sense of touch is found all over. This is because your sense of touch originates in the bottom layer of your skin called the dermis. The dermis is filled with many tiny nerve endings which give you information about the things with which your body comes in contact. They do this by carrying the information to the spinal cord, which sends messages to the brain where the feeling is registered.

Receptors special sensory structures in your skin ends (terminal branches of dendrites of sensory neurons)

each receptor is suited to receive only one type of stimulus and to start
impulses to the central nervous system

there are receptors for touch, pain, pressure, heat and cold

There are many pain receptors distributed throughout your skin. However, receptors that respond to pressure and touch lie deeper. If one presses something against your skin, you feel both pressure and touch.

The Tongue - The Sense of Taste

Taste buds probably play the most important part in helping you enjoy the many flavors of food. Your taste buds can recognize four basic kinds of tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. The salty/sweet taste buds are located near the front of your tongue; the sour taste buds line the sides of your tongue; and the bitter taste buds are found at the very back of your tongue.

Everyone's tastes are different. In fact, your tastes will change as you get older. When you were a baby, you had taste buds, not only on your tongue, but on the sides and roof of your mouth. This means you were very sensitive to different foods. As you grew, the taste buds began to disappear from the sides and roof of your mouth, leaving taste buds mostly on your tongue. As you get older, your taste buds will become even less sensitive, so you will be more likely to eat foods that you thought were too strong as a child.

Taste results from the chemical stimulation of certain nerve endings Your sense of taste is centered in the taste buds distributed unevenly over the surface of your tongue. They contain taste receptors. You are able to taste food as it mixes with your saliva and enters the pores of the taste buds. The nerve endings are then stimulated by the presence of food.

The Nose The Sense of Smell

Smell results from the chemical stimulation of the nerves, except the odors are in the form of gases. Turbinates the nasal passages found in three layers of cavities separated by bony layers

The upper turbinate contains branched endings of the olfactory nerve, a

sensory cranial nerve. The stimulation of these endings by odors results in the sensation of smell Smell receptors neurons embedded in the lining of your nose The axons of the neurons compose the nerves in your nose.

Seven Primary Odors Odor Camp horic Musky Roses Pepper minty Ethera l Punge nt Putrid Example Mothballs Perfume/Afte rshave Floral Mint Gum Dry Cleaning Fluid Vinegar Rotten Eggs

The Ear The Sense of Hearing and Balance How You Hear

When an object makes a noise, it sends vibrations (better known as sound waves) speeding through the air. These vibrations are then funneled into your ear canal by your outer ear. As the vibrations move into your middle ear, they hit your eardrum and cause it to vibrate as well. This sets off a chain reaction of vibrations. Your eardrum, which is smaller and thinner than the nail on your pinky finger, vibrates the three smallest bones in your body: first, the hammer, then the anvil, and finally, the stirrup. The stirrup passes the vibrations into a coiled tube in the inner ear called the cochlea.

The fluid-filled cochlea contains thousands of hair-like nerve endings called cilia. When the stirrup causes the fluid in the cochlea to vibrate, the cilia move. The cilia change the vibrations into messages that are sent to the brain via the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve carries messages from 25,000 receptors in your ear to your brain. Your brain then makes sense of the messages and tells you what sounds you are hearing.

How You Keep Your Balance

Near the top of the cochlea are three loops called the semi-circular canals. The canals are full of liquid also. When you move your head, the liquid moves. It pushes against hairlike nerve endings, which send messages to your brain. From these messages, your brain can tell whether or how your body is moving.

If you have ever felt dizzy after having spun around on a carnival ride, it was probably because the liquid inside the semicircular canals swirled around inside your ears. This makes the hairs of the sensory cells bend in all different directions, so the cells' signals confuse your brain.

The Eye The Sense of Sight

When light rays pass through your pupil, the muscle called the iris (colored ring) makes the size of the pupil change depending on the amount of light that's available. If there is too much light, your pupil will shrink to limit the number of light rays that enter. Likewise, if there is very little light available, the pupil will enlarge to let in as many light rays as it can. Just behind the pupil is the lens and it focuses the image through a jelly-like substance called the vitreous humor onto the back surface of the eyeball, called the retina. The retina, which is the size of your thumbnail, is filled with approximately 150 million light-sensitive cells called rods and cones. Rods identify shapes and work best in dim light. Cones on the other hand, identify color and work best in bright light. Both of these types of cells then send the information to the brain by way of the optic nerve. The amazing thing is, when they send the image to the brain, the image is upside down! It is the brain's job to turn the image rightside up

and then tell you what you are looking at. The brain does this in a specific place called the visual cortex.

Protection

The eyebrows are the strips of hair above your eyes which prevent sweat from running into them. Eyelashes help keep the eye clean by collecting small dirt and dust particles floating through the air. The eyelashes also protect the eye from the sun's and other light's glare. The eyelids sweep dirt from the surface of the eye. The eyelid also protects the eye from injury. Tears are sterile drops of clean water which constantly bathe the front of the eye, keeping it clean and moist.

Imperfect Eyesight

People who can see things up close, but not far away are considered to be nearsighted. This happens when the light entering the eye focuses on a point in front of the retina. On the other hand, people who can see far away objects but not those that are up close are farsighted. Farsightedness occurs when the light that enters the eye focuses on a point behind the retina. Whether a person is nearsighted or farsighted, glasses or contacts help that person to see things much more clearly.

TRIVIAS
You have more pain nerve endings than any other type. The least sensitive part of your body is the middle of your back.

 The most sensitive areas of your body are your hands, lips, face, neck, tongue, fingertips and feet. Shivering is a way your body has of trying to get warmer. There are about 100 touch receptors in each of your fingertips. Rattlesnakes use their skin to feel the body heat of other animals. We have almost 10,000 taste buds inside our mouths; even on the roofs of our mouths. Insects have the most highly developed sense of taste. They have taste organs on their feet, antennae, and mouthparts. Fish can taste with their fins and tail as well as their mouth.

In general, girls have more tastebuds than boys.

Taste is the weakest of the five senses. Dogs have 1 million smell cells per nostril and their smell cells are 100 times larger than humans! Humans use insect warning chemicals, called pheromones, to keep away pesky insects! People who cannot smell have a condition called Anosmia. If your nose is at its best, you can tell the difference between 4000-10,000 smells! As you get older, your sense of smell gets worse. Children are more likely to have better senses of smell than their parents or grandparents. Babies can get earaches because of milk backing up in the Eustachian tube, which causes bacteria to grow and may cause hearing problems later in life. When you go up to high elevations, the change in pressure causes your ears to pop. Children have more sensitive ears than adults. They can recognize a wider variety of noises. Dolphins have the best sense of hearing among animals. They are able to hear 14 times better than humans. Animals hear more sounds than humans. An earache is caused by too much fluid putting pressure on your eardrum. Earaches are often the result of an infection, allergies or a virus. Most people blink every 2-10 seconds. Each time you blink, you shut your eyes for 0.3 seconds, which means your eyes are closed at least 30 minutes a day just from blinking. If you only had one eye, everything would appear twodimensional. (This does not work just by closing one eye.) Owls can see a mouse moving over 150 feet away with light no brighter than a candle. The reason cat's and dog's eyes glow at night is because of silver mirrors in the back of their eyes called the tapetum. This makes it easier for them to see at night.

 An ostrich has eyes that are two inches across. Each eye weighs more than the brain. A chameleon's eyes can look in opposite directions at the same time. A newborn baby sees the world upside down because it takes some time for the baby's brain to learn to turn the picture rightside up. One in every twelve males is color blind.