Argument
Sensory nervous system
Overview
The sensory nervous system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. A sensory system consists of sensory neurons (including the sensory receptor cells), neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception and interoception. Commonly recognized sensory systems are those for vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, balance and visceral sensation. Sense organs are transducers that convert data from the outer physical world to the realm of the mind where people interpret the information, creating their perception of the world around them.
The receptive field is the area of the body or environment to which a receptor organ and receptor cells respond. For instance, the part of the world an eye can see, is its receptive field; the light that each rod or cone can see, is its receptive field. Receptive fields have been identified for the visual system, auditory system and somatosensory system.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
1. We must now treat of the Senses: for they are not alike in all, but some have all the senses, and some fewer. They are mostly five in number; seeing, hearing, smelling, taste, touch, and besides these there are none peculiar to any creatures. Man, then, and all viviparous animals with feet, besides all sanguineous and viviparous animals, have all these, unless they are undeveloped in any particular kind, as in…
Aristotle, Aristotle's History of Animals In Ten Books
States what Sensory nervous system is; the author is tied to Sensory nervous system in the knowledge graph.
The varieties of these sensations depend, firstly, on the diversity of the nerves themselves, and, secondly, of the movements that are made in each nerve. We have not, however, as many different senses as there are nerves. We can distinguish but seven principal classes of nerves, of which two belong to the internal, and the other five to the external senses.
René Descartes, Selections from the Principles of Philosophy
States what Sensory nervous system is.
As the nervous activity has emerged from the protoplasmic mass in which it was almost drowned, it has had to summon around itself activities of all kinds for its support. These could only be developed on other activities, which again implied others, and so on indefinitely. Thus it is that the complexity of functioning of the higher organisms goes on to infinity.
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Close in meaning to Sensory nervous system; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Action potential
- Visual perception
- Proprioception
- Nervous system
- Oxygen
- Sense
- Pain
- Perception
- Aristotle
- Visual cortex
- The Buddha
- Brain
- Stimulation
- Color
- Energy
- Taste
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of mind.