Devesh Yadav, Hrishik Mukherjee, Sarthak Jain
St Xavier’s College, Mumbai
Intro
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Humans have evolved with time, be it in terms of body
structure or be its senses. We, humans, have five basic
senses viz: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Over the
years' humans have evolved with powers to distinguish and
determine the two extremes of all of them. Some of the
senses have a broad spectrum of range such as eyesight which
can detect in the range of 400 -700 nanometers or sound
with an audible frequency range of 20Hz- 20KHz, on the
other hand, we have senses which can detect and distinguish
only a certain type of sense such as our “sense of taste"
which is capable of detecting maximum five different tastes.
Still, one of the most undervalued sense of we humans have
always been the "sense of smell".
EYE
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It all starts with the retina of the eye which undergoes
excitation and a series of chemical reactions after absorbing
light waves from the visible spectrum range (400 nm - 700
nm) which send stimulus to neurons and nerve fibers of the
brain thus creating the perceived image. It seems simple but
in reality, it is the involvement of cascades of chemical
reaction that help in it. Basically, the retina possesses
Vitamin A (Retinol) which gets transformed into Retinal.
EAR
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The human ear is a very remarkable device with the ability to
sense frequency range from 20 Hz to 20 kHz and higher-
pressure fluctuations (a million times!). It is divided into three
main parts viz, the Outer ear, middle ear and inner ear. The
inner ear contains the cochlea in which the organ of Corti
resides. The liquid in the organ of Corti, situated at the top
of the basilar membrane has a high potassium ion
concentration whereas the one situated at the bottom of the
membrane has low potassium ion concentration causing a
potential difference.
“Feed your senses with utmost care instead of exploiting them.”
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Nose
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While the "Thalamus" of the brain takes care of the four
senses viz, sight, sound, taste and touch, "Limbic" forms the
Central Processing unit for the last sense 'smell'. This part of
the brain takes care of emotions, feelings, moods, sexual
behaviour and memory. The process of smelling and detecting an
odor takes through a combined system called an olfactory
system which then has an olfactory bulb. Each bulb has small
hair-like things called "primary neurons" which are then
connected to the Limbic of the brain using the olfactory nerve.
Taste
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Sense of taste is controlled by a cluster of taste receptor
cells, which are collectively called, taste buds. Various
chemicals are used as references to distinguish the taste
between two substances. The saliva consists of some part of
sodium and the food substances having larger conc. led to the
diffusion of sodium thus depolarizing the taste cells giving the
sensation ‘salty’ (as in NaCl – salt). If the substance contains
acids whose conc. is greater than the H+ ion content in the
saliva, a similar procedure takes place and gives the sensation
of ‘sour’.
Touch
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A recent study has suggested that perception of position and
movement of the body or the sensation of touch is mainly
mediated by some protein families present in skin cells. Two
such members are Peizo1 and Peizo2 ion channel proteins which
show response when mechanically stimulated. In fact, it is the
Piezo2 channel that influences the sensation of touch. These
proteins are typically different in their structure and amino
acid sequence which confers them a unique ability for detecting
mechanical touch.
Conclusion
Though sounds complex, senses are the building blocks of our
life and life would have been very different without any one
of them, be it any, Thus, our life revolves around the
functioning of these senses and can't be replaced. So, make
sure to: