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Essay On Somatic Senses

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Somatic Senses

Somatic Senses are the components of the central and peripheral nervous systems that receive and interpret sensory information from organs in the joints, ligaments, muscles, and skin. This system processes information about the length, degree of stretch, tension, and contraction of muscles; pain; temperature; pressure; and joint position. Along with these are sensory receptors. Sensory Receptors function to detect changes in the environment and stimulate neurons to send nerve impulses to the brain.
Sensory Receptors are categorized into 5 types according to their sensitivities. Chemoreceptors: Stimulated by changes in the chemical concentration of substances. Painreceptors: Stimulated by tissue damage. Thermoreceptors: Stimulated by changes in temperature. Mechanoreceptors: Stimulated by changes in pressure or movement. Photoreceptors: Stimulated by light energy.
One repeated concept when it comes to physiology is the body’s adaptive responses to changes in order to achieve homeostasis. When it comes to senses, the body responds to stimuli via sensory adaptation. This is the ability to ignore unimportant stimuli. This is important because the brain needs a way to prioritize the sensory input it recieves or it would be overwhelmed with unimportant information. Sensory Adapation may involve receptors becoming …show more content…

They are responsible for the body’s sensitivity to light touch. This type of nerve endings is found all over the skin but is concentrated in areas such as the fingertips, palms and the face. Their superficial location in the dermis causes these corpuscles to be particularly sensitive to touch and vibrations. However, this also limits their detection since they can only signal that something is touching the skin. In particular, Meissner corpuscles have highest sensitivity when sensing vibrations lower than 50 Hertz. They are rapidly adaptive

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