Sense Organs and their functions

Sense organs are structures that carry messages about your surroundings to the central nervous system.

These senses are classified in to two categories: General and special.

General senses are ones that are most of the receptors scattered throughout the body. These senses are
further classified into two groups: Somatic and visceral senses.

Somatic senses gather information about the body and the environment

Visceral senses provide information about internal organs. These are sense organs that respond to heat,
pressure, and pain. They also detect changes in the position of the body. The receptors that localized in
an area are considered special senses that respond to light, smells, or chemicals.

The table shows the different types of sensory receptors in the different sense organs.

Receptor type Stimulus Location

Photoreceptor Light Eyes

Mechanoreceptor Movement, pressure, tension Skin, Ears
Chemoreceptor Chemical Tongue, nose
Thermoreceptor Temperature change Skin, hypothalamus
Pain receptor Tissue damage, except the brain All tissues ad organs

Specific areas of the brain control the different regions and functions of the body.

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The sense of sight

The eyes are specialized to focus on light rays in order to produce images. All the visual messages are
interpreted by the brain’s visual center located at the back of the brain.

Overview of the parts

Eye is appropriately called the eyeball

Sclera is the outermost protective layer (white part of the eye)

Cornea – part of the sclera where it is transparent at the front of the eyeball. It allows light rays to enter
the eye.

Iris – the circular, colored part of the eye that gives your eyes their color.

Pupil – small opening that regulates the amount of light that enter in the eye.

The interior of the eye has two compartments or chambers.

Aqueous humor – smaller compartment, aqueous chamber, filled with watery solution. The fluid helps
bend the light to enter the eye.
Vitreous humor – contains a transparent, jellylike fluid. The fluid give the eyeball its roundish shape and
refracts the light toward the retina.

Retina – eye’s innermost layer of tissue, containing more than 130 million light sensitive photoreceptors
called rods and cones.

Rods – photoreceptors detecting shades of grey when it is dark.

Cones – photoreceptors that detects colors.

Both of these photoreceptors produce nerve impulses that travel from the retina along the optic nerve
to the visual center of the brain. The brain must also combine the two slightly different images provided
by each of the eyes into one three-dimensional image.

Sense of hearing and balance

The external ear is shaped like a funnel, which adds efficiency in gathering sound waves in the air. Sound
waves pass through the ear canal to the eardrum, a tightly stretched membrane that separates the ear
canal from the middle ear where the smallest bones in the body are found (Hammer, anvil, stirrup). The
vibrations are then picked up by the mechanoreceptors in the inner ear’s snail shaped tube called the
cochlea. This part contains nerves that are stimulated by vibrations from a wide array of sounds and
loudness. The stimulated nerves produce nerve impulses that are carried from the cochlea to the brain
by the auditory nerve.

There are three tiny canals in the inner ear, called semicircular canals that are responsible for the sense
of balance by detecting movement. These canals and the tiny sacs near them are filled with fluid and
lined with tiny hairlike cells. The fluid within the semicircular canals of the inner ear moves with the
rotational movement of the head. Changes in the fluid is detected by the hairlike cells. The hairlike cells
respond by sending nerve impluses to the cerebellum of the brain. When the fluid does not stop
moving, it results in motion sickness. When losing balance, the brain detects these changes and will
automatically signal some muscles to contract and others to relax until balance is restored. This
balancing task happened when one has just gotten off a roller coaster. After the head turning and nerve
wracking ride, the sense of balance is restored in a few minutes.