The five sense organs of human beings: sight, taste, touch, smell and hearing are credited to Aristotle. Sight is considered to be the most developed sense, followed by hearing. More recently, the experts have also added another sense called proprioception, or an awareness of the body in space (Bjorklund 2009). Animals have the sensory receptors to sense their surroundings, and some animals can also sense the electric and magnetic field around them. All the 5 basic senses are the main components of perception. For example, music is associated with hearing, perfume with smell, food with taste, and movies are associated with sight and hearing.
The most frequently used sense is the sight that recognizes the seven colors of the spectrum, generally called vibgyor. The eyes create distinct two dimensional images that when combined produce a single image. Several different types of vision receptors in the eyes contribute to the brain’s activity to process visual information (Bjorklund 2009). The organ of hearing is the ear that comprises of the outer ear, middle ear and the inner ear. Hearing is possible because of the sound waves that are created by vibration that travel in water, air, or other medium. The other sense, touch is spread all over the body. The sensations to the brain are transmitted from end to end by the nervous system through the nerve endings in the membrane.
The taste bud receptors are responsible to activate and transfer the information to the brain, and these receptors can sense the tastes of salt, sour, bitter, sweet and umami. Umami is a taste that responds to glutamate, a chemical compound found in foods such as baron, fish and other foods (Bjorklund 2009). The sense of smell, also known as olfactory smell is a powerful sense. If a person has cold then the sense of smell is lost. Human sense of smell is weaker than the smell receptors of the dog. The sixth sense can be related to the balance of the body, temperature, or pain and these are dependent on the contrasting stimulations to work.
References
Bjorklund, Ruth. (2009). The Senses: The amazing human body, Marshall Cavendish.
