Completed notes of the course part 1

Pagina 1

SENSORY SYSTEM: FUNCTIONS The sensory system acquires and transmits information. This information is what happens in the environment and affects our body, and how a form of energy a stimulus gets to our body and hits the sensory system, and then the whole process starts to bring the information up to the brain. The neurosensory system has to detect the stimulus and to process them and it has to start a learning process. This information is always processed constantly within our body. A sensory system does not only transmit information but creates a new information that b ecomes a new sensation. At a certain point, our brain becomes conscious of a specific information, or effect that comes from the stimulus. The brain becomes able to recognize it. For example, all the body movements are the effect of a stimulus. So, the sensory system is not only transmission, but is generation and processing into new information, so this goes from transmission to cognition of sensation and then to creation of new sensation that generates from the beginning stimulus. This diagram summarizes what happens when we sense a stimulus and that stimulus becomes a sensation in our brain. This diagram can be applied to any sensory system. For every sensory system we have a stimulus, receptors (usually at the periphery of our body), The pe riphery transfers the stimulus into a form of energy that can be understood and transmitted by neurons. There are basic neurons that have extremities able to communicate with these peripheral receptors (called Intermediate Nuclei). So, the stimulus is transformed into electrical energy, it is pre -processed to be understandable by these special neurons that can catch the processed stimulus and transmit it up to the brain. That electrical signal is so able to…