SENSES OF THE BODY

  The tooth is an amazing sensory organ. The outside of the tooth, the enamel, is the hardest tissue in the human body.

Humans are very visual animals...we use our sense of sight to interpret much of the world around us. What we see is called "light." However, what we see is really only a small part of the entire "electromagnetic spectrum."

The ears contain structures for both the sense of hearing and the sense of balance. The eighth cranial nerve (vestibulocochlear nerve made up of the auditory and vestibular nerves) carries nerve impulses for both hearing and balance from the ear to the brain.

The smells of a rose, perfume, freshly baked bread and cookies...these smells are all made possible because of your nose and brain. The sense of smell, called olfaction, involves the detection and perception of chemicals floating in the air.

As you might imagine, smell and taste are often linked together. The sense of taste is also called gustation.