HLTC22H3 Lecture : Chapter 7.docx

• School: UTSC
• Department: Health Studies
• Course: HLTC22H3
• Professor: Dan Silver

Document Summary

The sensory system is composed of 5 senses: touch, smell, taste, hearing, and vision. Sensory organs allow the nervous system to gain info about the external environment. The skin is the sense organ for touch. W/ age, these receptors (touch & pressure) decrease both in number and in sensitivity, resulting in a degradation of the sense of touch, w/ decreases ability to detect, locate or identify objects. Given the importance of smell in the sense of taste, degradations in the ability to smell food may impair an older person"s appetite. Decrease in the senses of smell may have other safety and behavioural implications like an inability to detect leaking gas or when one has unacceptable body odours. Most of what we consider is actually a function of smell. The taste buds in the tongue can sense salt, sweet, sour, bitter, fat, and umami , which is composed of glutamate.