A checkerboard pattern of inner ear cells enables us to hear

A Japanese research group has become the first to reveal that the checkerboard-like arrangement of cells in the inner ear's organ of Corti is vital for hearing. The discovery gives new insight into how hearing works from ...

Discovery of an elusive cell type in fish sensory organs

One of the evolutionary disadvantages for mammals, relative to other vertebrates like fish and chickens, is the inability to regenerate sensory hair cells. The inner hair cells in our ears are responsible for transforming ...

Mosquitoes smell you better at night, study finds

In work published this week in Nature's Scientific Reports, a team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame's Eck Institute for Global Health, led by Associate Professor Giles Duffield and Assistant Professor Zain ...

NASA Studies Nanomechanics of Inner Ear

(PhysOrg.com) -- Learning how to walk again after long-duration space flights is a problem astronauts face as they readjust to Earth's gravity. To learn how microgravity affects human space travelers, NASA scientists studied ...

Our nostrils share a rivalry too, study finds

Your nostrils may seem to be a happy pair, working together to pick up scents. However, a study published online on August 20th in Current Biology reveals that there can actually be a kind of rivalry between the two.

Mathematical keys to a sixth sense -- the lateral-line system

Biophysicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen are leading an effort to develop and apply models of the so-called lateral-line system found in fish and some amphibians. This sensory organ enables an animal, even in ...

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Sensory system

A sensory system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. A sensory system consists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception. Commonly recognized sensory systems are those for vision, hearing, somatic sensation (touch), taste and olfaction (smell).

The receptive field is the specific part of the world 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, so far.

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