Essay On The Sensory System

The five senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell are all sensations throughout the human body. Sensation is the involvement of sensory receptors as well as the central nervous system in order to allow us to experience outside stimuli. The system that allows us to experience sensation is the sensory system.

The sensory system’s organs are the sense organs of the body. The purpose of the sensory system is to allow us to experience outside stimuli and identify alterations in the environment by sensory receptors and eyes, nose, ears, tongue, and skin, which are the sensory organs. The sensory system is actually one of the main elements of the body used to process sensory information.

The sensory system is not a system by itself in the human body; it is actually a sub system or a part of the nervous system. When sensory receptors/neurons from the sensory organs detect a stimulus, this information is sent to the brain through sensory neurons and the reaction to that stimulus is sent back to that area of the body where the stimulus was present. Another strong relationship between the nervous system and the sensory system is that there are parts of the brain (the brain is part of the central nervous system) that are involved in sensory perception such as thalamus as well as the lobes of the brain such as the parietal lobe (this is mainly involved in the senses of smell, touch, and taste).

One sub-system under the sensory system is the visual system; the main sense organs of this are the eyes. The eye is the sensory organ that allows us to detect light from external stimuli. When a light ray is detected, the eye converts these rays into electrical signals that can be sent to the brain in order to process the information and giv...

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...for the sense of balance; however, some major organs involved with this system are the semicircular canals (there are three of these), the saccule, and the utricle; all of these are located in the inner section of the ear, below the temporal bone. Some of the main functions of this system as a whole are to create movement, posture, balance, and reflexes. Reflexes are very important because when the head is moved or in movement, it can be helpful in maintaining the vision of an item that is being looked at without causing damage or issues in vision or the eyes. Movement and posture is also one of the biggest functions that the vestibular system provides because without this system and the organs that help provide it, it would be impossible to move and maintain posture even though there are other systems such as the muscular and skeletal system that provide movement.