sense (redirected from Sensory organs)

sense, faculty by which external or internal stimuli are conveyed to the brain centers, where they are registered as sensations. Sensory reception occurs in higher animals through a process known as transduction, in which stimuli are converted into nerve impulses and relayed to the brain. The four commonly known special senses (sight, hearing, smell, and taste) are concerned with the outer world, and external stimuli are received and conducted by sensory receptors concentrated in the eye, ear, olfactory organ, and the taste buds. The so-called somatic senses respond to both external and internal stimuli. Although most of the somatic receptors are located in the skin (conveying the external sensations of touch, heat, cold, pressure, and pain), others are located in internal organs (e.g., the heart and the stomach). Somatic sensations such as hunger, thirst, and fatigue are thought to originate in specific areas of the nervous system. The sense of balance, or equilibrium, is related to the flow of endolymph, a fluid found in the inner ear.

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sense

 or sensory reception or sense perception

Mechanism by which information is received about one's external or internal environment. Stimuli received by nerves, in some cases through specialized organs with receptor cells sensitive to one type of stimulus, are converted into impulses that travel to specialized areas of the brain, where they are analyzed. In addition to the “five senses”—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—humans have senses of motion (kinesthetic sense), heat, cold, pressure, pain, and balance. Temperature, pressure, and pain are cutaneous (skin) senses; different points on the skin are particularly sensitive to each. See also chemoreception, ear, eye, inner ear, mechanoreception, nose, photoreception, proprioception, taste, thermoreception, tongue.

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sense

1. any of the faculties by which the mind receives information about the external world or about the state of the body. In addition to the five traditional faculties of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, the term includes the means by which bodily position, temperature, pain, balance, etc., are perceived

2. such faculties collectively; the ability to perceive

3. a feeling perceived through one of the senses

4. Maths one of two opposite directions measured on a directed line; the sign as contrasted with the magnitude of a vector

5. Logic linguistics

a. the import of an expression as contrasted with its referent. Thus the morning star and the evening star have the same reference, Venus, but different senses

b. the property of an expression by virtue of which its referent is determined

c. that which one grasps in understanding an expression

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sense [sens]

(computer science)

To read punched holes in tape or cards.

(engineering)

To determine the arrangement or position of a device or the value of a quantity.

(navigation)

The general direction from which a radio signal arrives; if a radio bearing is received by a simple loop antenna, there are two possible readings approximately 180° apart; the resolving of this ambiguity is called sensing of the bearing.

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(human language)

sense - A meaning of a word.