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Cone Cells

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All living organism relies heavily on their senses for survival. The sensations felt by an organism allow it to navigate around, detect food source, detect harm, regulate body temperature and chemicals, change in pressure, etc. Each sensation is produce after a stimulus is registered by a receptor and since there are different kinds of sensation, there are also different types of receptor to accommodate each stimulus. Photoreceptors, like the name suggested are specialized cells that is capable of transducing light into visible sensation. In human, as well as other mammals, there are two primary type of photoreceptor cells, rod and cone cells, both of which locates in the retina. Rod and cones cells features striation-like structure on the …show more content…

Although both type of cells specialized in light detection, they are different in what kind of light they are capable of detecting. Rod cells work by detecting the presence of light in the environment, when there is no light, rod cells will not be stimulated. Therefore, rod cells primary function is to detect the presence of light, or black and white vision. Cone cells on the other hand, work only in bright environment and they responsible for the perception of color in mammals. In human there are three subtypes of cone cells known as red, blue, and green cone, which responsible for the sensation of the color red, blue, and green color wavelength, respectively. Animals with three types of cone cell are also known as trichromacy. Other mammals such as dog are dichromacy because they only have blue and green cones. However, there are also animals that can detect more than three color wavelength, such as many species of bird. This tetrachromacy in birds, allow them to have ultraviolet sensitivity. Since most bird species are capable of flight, they have a very big field of vision, …show more content…

Thermoreceptors are specialized nerve cells that have free nerve endings that locate beneath the skin. When these thermoreceptors detect a change in temperature, the information is sent via afferent neurons up the spinal cord and to the brain, more specifically the hypothalamus. After information is integrated in the hypothalamus, nerve impulses are sent via the efferent neurons to the appropriate locations of the body that will response to the temperature. Many organisms utilize thermoreceptors to assist in maintaining their homeostasis and keeping a constant temperature. Human and other endotherms are organisms that are capable of regulating their body temperature by generating internal heat to maintain a close temperature set point. When the temperature is too high, the body will response by sweating, the evaporation of sweat will reduce the kinetic energy, which will reduce the temperature on the skin surface. The blood vessels will also vasodilate, bringing more blood to the surface, allowing more heat to escape the body. On the contrary, when it is cold, the blood vessels will vasoconstrict, keeping the blood in the core of the body, which will keep the heat within our body. Shivering will also generate heat by using energy to cause muscle movements. Another mechanism to endotherms use to generate heat is to uncoupled electron transport chain and chemiosmosis in cellular respiration within

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