The basics of neuroscience: sensory information + the sensory homunculus

Now that you know the basics of brain anatomy from my last post, lets first take a look into sensory information

But before we get into that, let's look at something called the sensory homunculus (right). This is basically a diagram of the brain that illustrates it's relation to different body parts. It shows how sensitive each body part is in the brain. The bigger the body part, the more sensory receptors it has, thus the more sensitive that area of the body is.

There are may types of sensory receptors including photoreceptors, auditory receptors, nociceptors, thermoreceptors, and mechanoreceptors. Photoreceptors, located in your retina, sense light, auditory receptors in your inner ear sense sound (by receiving vibrations of sound waves), nociceptors are pain receptors, thermoreceptors sense temperature, and mechanoreceptors sense touch.

If you found this interesting, be sure to check out my next post on speech processing!