Psy 340 Essay

Studies have shown that if you have brain damage, it is known to have affected the ability to smell. The sense of taste creates an awareness of whether or not something put in the mouth is safe to eat. There are five basic tastes, salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. Umami is a savory taste of a chemical called glutamate. It is found in foods such as bacon, corn, mushrooms, tomatoes, etc. “The taste organ is a collection of specialized cells called taste buds.” There are about 10,000 taste buds on the tongue(top), and more in the throat, soft palate, soft tissue found at the back of the roof of the mouth, and the epiglottis, the flap of cartilage at the bottom\base of tongue. On the top and sides of your tongue, there small bumps called lingual papillae. Three out of 4 types contain taste buds. On the sides, there are the foliate papillae, which appear as a series of ridges. The small, rounded projections found all over the tongue, especially at the and top of sides, are the fungiform papillae. Each of these contain only 5 taste buds. “There are only 5-12 of the largest papillae, called the circumvallate papillae, but they contain more than 250 taste buds

Not all of these parts of the brain could be considered to be in the auditory system since they often overlap with the visual system and others. Some evidence suggests that inside the brain the auditory cortex doesn’t just receive the inputs from auditory senses but is impacted from more than one sensory stimuli since the auditory cortex is spread out extensively inside the brain to sensory areas. Because of so many different complications in the auditory cortex and how it is connected to parts of the brain that are not involved in hearing the scientist have decided to only define the auditory cortex to be correlated with hearing if the inputs come from the medial geniculate body in the thalamus of the brain. The rest of the inputs that are correlated with the auditory cortex but are not received from the medial geniculate body of the thalamus are mentioned as auditory

There are various TCRs involved in the detection of the different taste qualities. These TRCs are primarily located in taste buds, which are found in raised papillae across the tongue. There are approximately 5,000 taste buds within the oral cavity, each containing over a hundred TRCs (4). TRCs are polarized neuroepithelial cells. Their apical tips are exposed to the external environment and are in close proximity with sensory nerve endings. TRCs are divided into three major classes: type I glial-like cells, type II receptor cells and type III presynaptic cells (5).

The middle ear functions at the physiological level to transmit sound from the outer ear to the inner ear. The middle ear consists of an air filled space between the tympanic membrane and the inner ear. The inner ear contains three small bones, the malleus, incus, and the stapes. And tiny ligaments and muscles that support and adjust tension. The sound travels down the ear canal and strikes the tympanic membrane causing it to vibrate. The vibrations are transferred through the osscicles to the cochlea, which is the inner ear. The first bone is the malleus and it is attached to the inside surface of the tympanic membrane, the second bone is the incus, and the innermost bone is the stapes. The sound sets this whole structure into vibration transferring

Our brains process sound including music through sound waves. The sound waves undergo a long process in order to reach the brain. When the sound waves are being transferred they start by going into the outer ear and then transferring through the ear canal. At the end of the ear canal is the eardrum where the sound starts to vibrate and is sent to three different bones. The Malleus, Incus, and Stapes. The bones increase the sound’s vibrations until it is sent off to the cochlea. In the cochlea there is an “elastic partition” or a division of sound, dividing the sound into two parts. This is also known as the Basilar Membrane. The cochlea has a fluid inside and once it starts to ripple then a moving wave builds along the Basilar Membrane. There

Sensory: Conveys sensations from posterior third of the tongue and the outer ear such as taste (specifically bitter and sour tastes), pressure, pain, and temperature. This nerve also plays a role in regulating blood pressure and respiration.

Have you ever wondered why nothing tastes good when you have a cold? Or why holding your nose helps yucky foods go down easier. Those tiny bumps on your tongue are called taste buds. They hold the key to discovering what is yummy or yucky. Your taste buds allow you to taste the 4 simple flavors. Sour, sweet, salty and bitter.Your nose holds the sense of smell. If we don’t have the ability to smell, it can be harder to tell the difference between most foods. In fact, scientist say that most of our sense of taste is actually smell. Your ability to discriminate between many different smells makes your sense of taste even stronger.

The optic nerve has to enter the confines of the eye somewhere in order to innervate the retina. Where it enters has no rods and cones (the very nerve endings of the optic nerve which allow us to see). Therefore, this is a "blind spot."

Over the past years, bioengineers have applied different methods for modelling the human ear. The human ear is an intricate biomechanical system with its primary function to sound perception and reception. The ear is divided into 3 main components, each with its own unique functions: the outer ear (pinna), the middle ear, and the inner ear. The outer ear, or the pinna, consists of the auricle, the skin covered cartilage of the ear visible on the outside of the head, as well as the opening to the auditory canal. The middle ear refers the air-filled hollow space (tympanic cavity) behind the eardrum or tympanic membrane. The tympanic membrane is a thin, cone-shaped membrane that separates the outer ear from the middle ear (Figure 1a). The tympanic membrane is made up of two main parts: the fragile pars flaccida (upper region) and robust the pars tersa (lower region). The pars tersa, composed of three layers: skin, fibrous tissue, and mucus, makes up the majority of the tympanic membrane. The pars flaccida is often associated with eustachian tube malfunctions and choleostomas, whereas the pars tersa is associated with perforations. There are 3 bones, the malleus, incus, and stapes, in the middle ear (Figure 1b) that vibrate when exposed to the vibrations of the sound waves. The malleus is attached to the medial surface of the tympanic

This pinna is more or less oval shaped, flexible and can vary in size. Due to the fact that there are only few muscles in the area of the external ear, humans need to turn their heads towards the sound source location, in order to achieve a more accurate detection of the position of this sound source. As far as the middle ear is concerned, its purpose is to transform the energy of a sound wave into internal vibrations, which take place in the bone structure of the middle ear and ultimately transform these vibrations into a compressional wave, which will be received by the inner ear. The middle ear could be described as an air-filled cavity that consists of the eardrum and 3 tiny interconnected bones (in fact, they’re the smallest bones of our body), the well-known the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, which serve to amplify the vibrations. What actually happens there, is that the compression of the sound wave forces the eardrum inward, while a rarefaction forces the eardrum outward, thus vibrating the eardrum at the same frequency of the sound wave. After the eardrum’s vibrations are passed through the middle ear bones, they go on to the cochlea. Basically, the movements of the eardrum are connected to the hammer and as a result, those movements set the hammer, anvil and stirrup in motion, at the same frequency of the sound wave, as we said

Food palatability refers to an organism 's subjective experience of food and can be either positive or aversive. As a result, this is generally associated with reward "liking". The reward value attributed to obtaining different foods plays a role in determining an organism 's actions, and is thus referred to as reward "wanting". These "liking" and "wanting" pathways were previously thought to be processed by similar, linked, neural structures including the nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum and were thought to go hand in hand (Smith & Berridge, 2007). However, many researchers now suggests otherwise. Studies still indicate that the nucleus accumbens shell

The cortex is divided into four different lobes, the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital, which are each responsible for processing different types of sensory information. The frontal lobe, located at the front and upper area of the cortex and carries out mental processes including thinking, planning, speaking fluently (without fault) and is where personalities are formed. The parietal lobe processes sensory information including mainly taste, temperature and touch and is the upper, back part of the cortex. The temporal lobe processes and comprehends auditory sensory information, serves as a storage area, controls memory and is found at the bottom middle area of the cortex, behind the temples. The occipital lobe processes and comprehends all visual sensory information and is located at the bottom, back part of the cortex.

The ear is sectioned off into three parts, the outer, the middle, and the inner ear. Each section serves its own function to the hearing of an individual. The external portion of the ear includes the auricle, the auditory canal, and the eardrum outer layer. The auricle is the cartilage that is covered by skin on opposite sides of the head, the auditory canal, more commonly called the ear canal, is the tunnel in which sound waves travel down, and the ear drum, also known as the tympanic membrane. The function of the auricle is to collect sound and act as a funnel that amplifies that sound down into the auditory canal (Middlebrooks and Green, 1991). The ear canal serves to transfer sound to the ear drum and the secretion of earwax which helps protect the ear from bacteria, fungi, and insects (Okuda, et al., 1991). The eardrums main purpose is to transmit sound from air to the ossicles in the middle ear and then to the oval window in the fluid-filled cochlea. The ossicles are the common name for the three middle ear bones that transmit sound from the air to the fluid-filled cochlea. The ossicles consist of the malleus, incus, and stapes bones in that order respectively. These bones contribute to the amplification and transmission of sound to the inner ear. Our main focus is on the inner and its function in hearing and ultimately hearing loss. The inner ear consists of two main parts: the cochlea, which detects sound, and the vestibular system, that is dedicated to balance

The ears previously mentioned are a collaboration of different very small and delicate organs and body parts. The first and most recognisable part of the ear is the only visible section, the Auricle, Pinna or outer ear, this works as the receptor for audio and works quite on the contrary to the horn of a gramophone, it’s larger surface area allows for the capturing of sound waves and then funnels the vibrations in through the ear cannel to the other parts of the ear (Mackenna and Callander, 1997). The next piece of anatomy to receive the acquired sound waves is the tympanic membrane or the eardrum, this is stretched indirectly across the end of the ear canal, it operates as the main sound receptacle, when sound waves hit it’s surface it vibrates, which then causes the ossicles; the combination of the malleus, stapes and the incus, located and attached to the eardrum transmits the sound to the vestibular window, two muscles then modulate the

Our ears – including our outer, middle, and inner, are our body’s organ for hearing. The real purpose of our outer ear isn’t to hold our hair back or keep our sunglasses on, but to capture sound vibrations like a cup and direct them through the skull where they are converted into action potentials in a “sensory dendrite” that is connected to the “auditory nerve” (Farabee, 2001). The brain combines the input of our two ears to determine the direction and distance of sounds.