ANATOMY

Anatomy: Special Senses

Prompt 1

The human body has two senses types: special and general. Special senses include various body organs to feel the surroundings, for example, balancing, seeing, tasting, and smell, whereas general senses are only related to touch (Miller, 2020). The sensory data that the brain receives is collected by the skin that touches the objects. The general senses encompass pain, pressure, vibration, and proprioception. For instance, if we touch a hot cup of coffee, the fingers suddenly know that they would be burnt, and they immediately try to retract themselves from the cup. This is the information processing that the brain acts in a certain way when the skin touches the cup and gets the stimulus. The brain formulates the important functions when the sense of touch gathers the prompts from the skin. Sensory receptors play a key role in this entire processing.

Prompt 2

The structure of olfaction involves the nose and nasal cavities that help in smelling along with the upper parts of the olfactory system with mucous. The lower parts assist in clarifying the passages for respiration. The function of the olfactory system is to detect and identify different smells that are present in the air in the form of molecules (Bailey, 2021). The function of the olfactory bulb is to process the information for smell for the brain that comes from olfactory receptors. The bony structure of the nose help in keeping the entire framework intact and keep it in shape.

Moreover, the olfactory nerve is the primary nerve involved in the whole process. It is the sensory reception nerve that enables smelling. It is carried from a special afferent nerve within the nose and has a particular connection with the thalamus (Physiopedia, n.a.). It ends at the olfactory bulb, and the transmission of impulses caught from the stimuli within the air reaches the cerebral cortex.

References

Bailey, R. (2021, August 17). The olfactory system and your sense of smell. Thought Co. https://www.thoughtco.com/olfactory-system-4066176#:~:text=The%20olfactory%20system%20is%20responsible,where%20the%20signals%20are%20processed.

Miller, C. (2020). Human biology: Human anatomy and physiology. Pressbooks publishing.

Physiopedia. (n.a.). Olfactory nerve. https://www.physio-pedia.com/Olfactory_Nerve#:~:text=The%20olfactory%20nerve%20is%20the,through%20special%20visceral%20afferent%20nerve.