This article shows that some of the sensory systems, such as vision and audition, have a longer history of study and are much better understood than touch, smell, or taste. Historical accounts are often included to provide a broader context for contemporary research. The sections of this article provide a thorough discussion of each sensory system, the major areas of research within each field, how the sensory systems often interact to create multisensory experiences, and how non-sensory factors, such as cognition, behavior, and experience, can affect perceptual experience. Perceptual scientists have utilized a variety of behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging techniques to discover how sensory inputs are organized in the brain and how sensory coding maps onto perceptual experiences. Finally, taste occurs when liquid or solid molecules stimulate receptors on the tongue and information about taste quality can be processed by the gustatory cortex. The sense of smell arises once odorant receptors in the nose detect gas molecules and structures within the olfactory cortex work to discriminate, identify, and affectively evaluate odor qualities. The experiences of touch, pain, and temperature result from the activation of mechanoreceptors, nociceptors, and thermoreceptors on the skin, which send information to the somatosensory cortex. For audition, changes in air pressure are transformed by the inner ear and auditory cortex into the experience of hearing sound.
In vision, light activates photoreceptors on the retina, which leads to a cascade of chemical and electrical events, processing in the visual cortex, and finally the experience of seeing.
However, all five senses share the common goal of detecting sensory information from the external environment and processing that information into a perceptual experience. There are five primary senses, each with unique sensory inputs, structures, and mechanisms underlying its function. In some cases, actions are guided by sensory information processed outside of awareness, and such cases will be discussed later. Perception is the study of how sensory information is processed into perceptual experiences.
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