BIOL373 Chapter Notes -Noxious Stimulus, Vestibular Nerve, Cyclic Guanosine Monophosphate
5 Sep 2013
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Special senses: visions, hearing, taste, smell and equilibrium. Somatic senses: touch, temperature, pain, itch, and proprioception. Proprioception: the awareness of body movement and position in space; mediated by muscle and joint sensory receptors (proprioceptors) and may be either unconscious or conscious. Sensory systems: the simplest systems are single sensory neurons with branched dendrites that function as receptors. They may have myelinated unmyelinated axons: the most complex systems include multicellular sense organs. Nerve endings are encased in connective tissue capsules. May be myelinated or unmyelinated: most special sense receptors are that release neurotransmitter onto sensory neurons, initiating an action potential or cells. The receptors for smell are neurons, but the other four special senses use non-neural receptor cells that synapse onto sensory neurons. Both neural and non-neural receptors develop from the same embryonic tissue. Receptors: chemoreceptors: respond to chemical ligands that bind to the receptor (oxygen, ph, organic molecules, etc. )
