Type of Senses

Sense is a system used biologically for sensation that gathers information from outside and responds to the stimuli. The first mention of senses was done in De Anima by Aristotle in 384-322 BC. There are five basic senses of human beings and some people also believe that there are more.

So the first question- how does this work? well, the five senses receive a signal from the environment transmit them to the brain which interprets the signal and cause required body action.

Types of senses:

Taste or gustation: This sense is provided by the tongue as the sensory organ There are four intrinsic muscles that work together to help with tongue flexibility. Now usually there are four different tastes: sour, salty, bitter and sweet. This sense of tasting has developed through human evolution and it aids in identifying the type of food we are eating such as a bitter or sour-tasting plant may indicate that the plant is poisonous. Although there is no limitation in the type of taste as savoury was also added to the list recently, spicy is not a type of taste. It is a signal for pain as suggested by the National Library of Medicine.
Touch or tactician: It is believed to be the first sense that a human being develops. Skin is the sensory organ in this case and skin is also the largest organ of human beings. There are specialised sensory receptors present in the skin which respond to signals provided from the outside. There are different types of sensations to which our body responds such as vibrations, pain, pressure, temperature, light touch. All these sensations are gathered by different receptors in the skin.
Sight or Vision: Sight or perceiving objects from the eyes is a beautiful yet complex process. Vision is the ability of the eye to capture the light and the eye here is the sensory organ. Vision is also our primary sense with 50% of the cerebral cortex dedicated to processing visual information. The eye collects light, focuses on it and then translate the light into a signal which is then transferred to the brain through receptors. Here, the signal is interpreted and a visual image is formed.
Smell or olfaction: The sense of smell is called olfaction and the sensory organ used for the process is called the nose. An average person has around 5 million scent receptors and can smell about 1 trillion of smells according to researchers. Dogs have more than a 100 million scent receptors and are considered as best smellers, also because of our ability to tame them. When we inhale or sniff, the chemicals in the air gets combined with the smelling receptors which transfer the signal to the brain that in turn interpret the signal and identify the inhaled smell. The ability to smell poorly may be an indication of a medical condition or ageing.
Hearing or audition: Hearing is the ability to observe sound waves and it uses the ear as a sensory organ. All the different types of sound waves: music, car honks, laughter reaches the ear through the ear canal and into the eardrum. The eardrum is a connective tissue that vibrates as a response to sound waves. These vibrations, at last, reach the spiral organ which is the receptor for hearing and transfer the signal to the brain for interpreting the information. Balance is the ability to maintain an appropriate body position and the ear plays a major role in it as there is fluid inside the ears that move along with the position of our head.

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