Sensory systems

Published on May 30, 2024   43 min

Other Talks in the Series: Fundamentals of Human Physiology

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0:00
Hello, I'm Dr. Angelina Fong from the Department of Anatomy and Physiology from the University of Melbourne in Australia. In this recording, we are going to explore how we sense the world around us as well as how we sense what's going on inside our body. This is really key and important in how we maintain normal physiological function.
0:27
You may recall earlier in this series we discussed the concept of homeostasis. The idea about homeostasis is that we maintain a relatively constant internal environment. We say relatively constant because it is not a steady state where nothing changes but things are kept within a comfortable range. Our body is constantly responding to changes around us in the environment as well as changes within our internal organs and systems. But we need to be able to detect these changes in order to respond to maintain homeostasis.
1:08
There are constantly changes from the external environment. If you imagine these might be temperature changes, you might detect movement of air around you, you might detect the sight, and right now you're hearing my voice. These are all external inputs. We have to somehow sense these and determine whether we need to respond to it and how do we respond to it. There are also internal factors that change such as movement of our limbs, our muscles, as well as changes in our blood pressure. How our body is responding to this it's all part of the homeostatic response. We'll explore how these changes occur a little bit later in the series. But right now in this particular recording, we're going to look at the ways or mechanisms that the body detects these changes.

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