Overview

From taste and smell to touch, hearing, and vision, each of the

senses play a vital role in day-to-day tasks like cooking a healthy

meal. However, there is a lot more to our five senses then meets

the eye. Each special sense organ has a unique set of

characteristics that makes it unique and work together in harmony

with the other senses to make our body function.

 

Touch

How does the body know when a stovetop is hot or cool when

there are no visual clues? A person’s first reaction is to touch it.

When the person’s fingers come into contact with the stove’s

surface, the nerves receptors conduct a stimulus that sends the

information to the brain. The transmission of information depends

on the type, location, intensity and duration of stimulus. In this

case thermoreceptors sense if the stove is hot or cold and the

stimulus created will make the hand jerk away if the stove is hot.

 

Smell

As you start to prepare your meal you begin to smell the aroma of the

food. This happens when odor molecules bind to receptors on olfactory

or nose hairs. Olfactory cells also bind odor molecules in a thin layer of mucus and contain axons that send signals from the nose to the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus areas of the brain, which are said to link emotions and histories with smell.

 

Hearing

Another important part of preparing a meal is hearing,

whether it is a timer buzzing or the sizzling of vegetables

in a pan. Audible vibrations of air molecules create sounds,

which then pass though the outer, middle and inner ear.

The sounds first pass though the outer ear into the

external auditory meatus. They then cross over to the

middle ear though the tympanic membrane where the

sounds cause the malleus, incus, and stapes (the three

little bones of the ear) to vibrate. The vibrations then

travel to the inner ear that houses the cochlea, which

contains tiny hair receptors that are responsible for

hearing and adjusting cochlear responses.

The ear also plays a role in coordination and balance, two

necessities when handling hot food and sharp objects in the kitchen. Equilibrium stems from receptors in the vestibule (attached to cochlea) called the semicircular ducts, saccule, and uricle. These receptors perceive head orientation, as well as linear and angular acceleration or motion in order to maintain balance.

 

Vision

Most people say you eat with your eyes. This is

sometimes a bad thing when your eyes are bigger

than your stomach, yet vision is imperative for preparing

and enjoying any meal. First, six different extrinsic

muscles around the eye work together in order to move

the eye up, down, left, right, and diagonal, and are

innervated by cranial nerves III, IV, and VI. The eye itself

contains three layers composed of the retina and optic

nerve; choroid, cilliary body, and iris; and sclera and

cornea. The cornea, aqueous humor, lens, and vitreous

humor all work together to refract light to focus on the

retina, which is inverted and reversed. Photoreceptor

cells in the retina called rods and cones “smell” light

meaning they absorb different wavelengths of light to produce color vision. From there, the visual projection makes its way to the second cranial nerve, optic chiasm, lateral geniculate nucleus, optic radiation, visual cortex, and superior colliculi. The brain then forms the image that you see in front of you.

 

Taste

Now to enjoy the meal you have prepared. After taking the first bite the taste buds on the tongue, along with the saliva, begin to dissolve and sense the different tastes consumed. Taste is influenced by food texture, aroma, temperature, and even appearance. As the saliva starts dissolving molecules of food, the five different regions of taste bud cells create the sensation of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami tastes.