Physiology 2130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Vestibular System, Sensory Neuron, Somatosensory System

• School: Western University
• Department: Physiology
• Course: Physiology 2130
• Professor: Christine Bell

Document Summary

The human body has several sensory systems that allow it to detect external changes rapidly. These systems include: the somatosensory (touch, visual, auditory, olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste) and vestibular system. Transduction of environmental information is how information form the external environment is turned into language the brain understands action potentials. In order for the brain to consciously perceive an environmental stimulus, that stimulus must be detected by a sensory receptor. Although there are many types of stimuli and a corresponding receptor to detect, some receptors can detect more than one type of stimulus. In receptors with no axons (like the hair cells in the inner ear), the depolarization has to spread to the synapse to result in the release of a neurotransmitter. In the nervous system module, we talked about how neural coding informed the brain of the weight of an object in your hand.