Study Words on Quizlet http://quizlet.com/35745265/anatomy-ch-10-flash-cards/ Chapter 10: Somatic and Special Senses
1. Sensory Receptors: Detect environmental changes and trigger nerve impulses that travel on sensory pathways into the central nervous system for processing and interpretation.
2. Somatic Senses: Touch, pressure, temperature, and pain
3. Special Senses: Smell, taste, hearing, equilibrium, and vision
4. 5 groups of sensory receptors: Chemoreceptors, Pain receptors, thermoreceptors, mechanoreceptors, and photoreceptors.
5. The process that allows an individual to locate the region of stimulation is called projection.
6. The process that makes a receptor ignore a continuous stimulus unless the strength of that stimulus is increased is sensory adaptation.
7. Cutaneous Receptors:
Type
Structure/Location
Sensation
Free nerve endings
Epithelial tissues; Free ends extend between epithelial cells
Touch/Pressure
Meissner’s corpuscles (mechanoreceptors)
Small, oval shaped flattened connective tissues. 2+ sensory nerve fibers branch into each corpuscle and end… Abundant in lips, fingertips, palms, soles, nipples, and external genital organs (hairless regions)
Respond to motion of objects that barley contact the skin, interpreting impulses from them as the sensation of light touch
Pacinian corpuscles
Large structures of connective tissue fibers and cells. Common in deeper subcutaneous tissues and in muscle tendons and joint ligaments
Heavy pressure and are associated with the sensation of deep pressure
Temperature senses
Found in the nerve endings of the skin
2 different types: warm and cold. Warm receptors are most sensitive to temperatures above 77° and cold receptors are most sensitive to temperatures between 50° F and 68°
Free nerve endings (pain receptors)
Orderly distribution
Senses pain
1. Pain receptors: Spread widely and are unpleasant
2. Visceral pain is triggered by stimulation of … receptors