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Medical Forum / General / General / April 2006

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Physiological senses - what are they?

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Manning - 18 Apr 2006 03:42 GMT
A dispute has arisen at Wikipedia about medical terminology in regard
to the field of physiological sensory perception, and I'm looking for
some assistance from "people who know what they are talking about".

If someone can point me in the direction of a citable resource (ie -
textbook) to resolve the following questions, I'd be most grateful. If
any appropriately qualified people have opinions, I'd also be glad to
hear them.

1 - How many human physiological senses are there? (eg touch, smell,
taste, etc). My personal guess is nine (sight, smell, taste, hearing,
touch, pain, temperature, balance and body position), but I'm no
physiologist.

2 - What are they formally called? (eg sight = "vision", smell =
"olfaction", etc).

3 - (Following on from above...) What is the physiological term used to
describe the sense of pressure perception (ie - touch). Is it
"tactition", "taction", or something else?

4 - Are the experiences of "hunger" and "thirst" distinct sensory
modalities, or are they post-sensory cognitive processes?

5 - Is there any evidence that humans can sensorily perceive magnetic
fields, electric fields, nuclear energy, or any other stimuli?

6 - If the group of "touch" related senses (touch, pain, temperature)
are called "somatosensory", what are the other grouped senses called?

7 - In neurological terms, is pain from external/superficial causes (eg
a cut or a blow) the same as pain from internal sources (eg. a kidney
stone or oesophagal reflux)?

Cheers Manning
Bob - 20 Apr 2006 04:52 GMT
>A dispute has arisen at Wikipedia about medical terminology in regard
>to the field of physiological sensory perception, and I'm looking for
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>touch, pain, temperature, balance and body position), but I'm no
>physiologist.

Well, unless you tell us how you define "one sense", we can't count
them clearly -- as if there were any point of doing so anyway.

We now understand that heat and a particular chemical both interact
with the exact same receptor molecule -- but that different chemicals
may interact with different receptors. So how do we count?

bob
 
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