Psychology : $b A study of mental lifeWoodworth, Robert Sessions
Science
Psychology : $b A study of mental life
Woodworth, Robert Sessions
Psychology
The internal ear contains sense cells of three rather similar kinds,
all being "hair cells", Instead of a single {192} sensitive tip, each
cell has a number of fine hair-tips, and it is these that first
respond to the physical stimulus. In the cochlea, the part of the
inner ear concerned with hearing, the hairs are shaken by sound
vibrations that have reached the liquid in which the whole end-organ
is immersed. In the "semicircular canals", a part of the inner ear
that is concerned not with sound but with rotary movements of the
head, we find hair cells again, their hair-tips being matted together
and so located as to be bent, like reeds growing on the bottom of a
brook, by currents of the liquid filling the canals. In the
"vestibule", the central part of the inner ear, the hair-tips of the
sense cells are matted together, and in the mat are imbedded little
particles of stony matter, called the "otoliths". When the head is
inclined in any direction, these heavy particles sag and bend the
hairs, so stimulating them; and the same result occurs when a sudden
motion up or down or in any direction is given to the head. Around the
base of the sense cells, in any of these parts of the internal ear,
are twined the fine endings of sensory axons, which are excited by the
activity of the sense cells, and pass the activity on to the brain.
Accessory sense-apparatus.
Every sense except the "pain sense" has more or less of this. The
hairs of the skin are accessory to the sense of touch. A touch on a
hair is so easily felt that we often think of the hairs as sensitive;
but really it is the skin that is sensitive, or, rather, it is the
sensory axon terminating around the root of the hair in the skin. The
tongue can be thought of as accessory apparatus serving the sense of
taste, and the breathing apparatus as accessory to the sense of smell,
"tasting" being largely a tongue movement that brings the substance to
the taste cells, and "smelling" of anything being largely a series of
little inspiratory movements that carry the odor-laden air to the
olfactory part of the nasal cavity.
{193}
But it is in the eye and the ear that the highest development of
accessory sense apparatus has taken place. All of the eye except the
retina, and all of the ear except the sense cells and the sensory
axons, are accessory.
[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Horizontal cross section through the right
eyeball. (Figure text: cornea, ciliary muscle, retina, choroid.
sclerotic, Optic Nerve)]
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