ABSTRACT
Olfaction, Taste, Audition, and Somatosensation All sensory systems share common tasks, including the transformation of sensory stimuli into electrical signals, the optimization of detection sensitivity, selectivity, speed, and reliability, and the extraction of salient features with the ultimate purpose of helping animals survive and reproduce. At the same time, each sensory system has unique properties related to the physical nature of the sensory stimuli and how the sense serves the organism. Our detailed study of vision in Chapter 4 provides a framework that we will expand here as we examine the remaining major senses: olfaction, taste, audition, and somatosensation. We will study olfaction rst and in greatest detail, as it diers from the other senses in some important ways, such as the large number of odorant receptors and the direct path by which olfactory signals are transmitted to the cortex. We begin our story with salmon homing.
