NOSE SENSES

Nose Senses

Nose Senses

Introduction

I think that we might fairly gauge the future of biological science, centuries ahead, by estimating the time it will take to reach a complete comprehensive understanding of odor. It may not seem a profound enough problem to dominate all the life sciences, but it contains, piece by piece all the mysteries.” (Thomas, 1980 p 732) The chosen organ I have chosen is the nose and how it is responsible for the allowing us to smell. The nose is a wonderful organ to examine because it is responsible for activating many processes of our body.

Discussion

The role of the nose is the sense of smell which causes the body to decide what to eat by our salivary glands releasing saliva which aids in the process of digestion by gastric juice being released. Without the sense of smell the body would not be able to make decisions of what is safe to eat because our nose can detect more than 10,000 odors and determine based on the smell what is safe or dangerous. Chemistry is important to the sense of smell because it allows us make decisions that we are not aware of by pheromones, we may be attracted to a person that we may not find personally attractive but we are attracted because. Pheromones play an important port of our body chemistry through sense of smell that we do not notice and it is a sexual attraction. The nose draws in smell through the nasal cavity which then is transferred to specialized receptor cells on the olfactory epithelium. The receptor cells act as a messenger by sending signals to the brain from the olfactory nerve, the receptors remember the smells or molecule type and are able to distinguish each one uniquely. The molecules are next sent to the olfactory bulb which is part of the brain and above the nose where the molecules are turned into olfactory senses or smells are we call them(Gulya, 1999).

The nose is suited specifically to aid in the intake of air which transports the molecules to be translated into smell. The nose acts as a vacuum with a brain, it will suck in the smells that it finds pleasing and will stop the vacuuming if it encounters a smell that is offensive. Furthermore mucus will discharge from the nose if the smells unwanted by your body thus emptying the vacuum cleaner which is activated by your senses.

Our sense of smell is something that many of us take for granted, because it doesn't seem to be necessary for our survival the way our other senses are. However, odors do indeed have an effect on our daily lives. Imagine what it would be like walking into a movie theater or a bakery and not being able to smell each of their distinct odors (Gulya, Gulya, and Wilson, 1999). The sense of smell adds a richness to our lives that we aren't always conscious of, but as soon as it's taken away it ...