The Body Senses & Synesthesia

Vocabulary flashcards based on lecture notes covering the four body senses (touch, pain, vestibular, kinesthesis), neurotransmitter agonists, and the phenomenon of synesthesia.

Somatosensation (Touch)

A body sense that combines four different sensations: pressure, warmth, cold, and pain.

Wetness sensation

The perception resulting from a combination of the sensations of cold and pressure.

Afferent neurons

Neurons that are activated by sensory receptors to bring a touch message up to the spinal cord.

Interneurons

Neurons located in the spinal cord that bring sensory messages from the spine to the brain to be sensed.

Pain

A body sense that ensures we detect if something is going wrong in our body or prompts us to stop an action that is harming us.

Endorphins

Feel good hormones and neurotransmitters that act to stop or "end" pain.

Gate Control Theory

The theory that the spinal cord contains nerve fibers that can "open" to allow pain signals through or "close" to block them.

Agonists

Drugs that boost the power of certain neurotransmitters by connecting to receptors and creating a chain reaction to create more of that neurotransmitter.

THC/Cannabis

An illicit or recreational drug that acts as an agonist for dopamine.

Alcohol

A recreational drug that acts as an agonist for GABA.

Heroin/opioids

Recreational drugs that act as agonists for endorphins and dopamine.

Methadone

A prescription drug that acts as an agonist for opioids.

Vestibular sense

The body sense responsible for balance, sensed through the semicircular canals in the cochlea.

Motion sickness

A form of sensory interaction where the vestibular sense and sight provide conflicting information about movement.

Kinesthesis

The body sense that informs us if we are moving our own body.

Proprioception

The knowledge of where our body parts are positioned around us.

Embodied cognition

The phenomenon where the sense of touch affects an individual's cognition or thinking in a given moment.

Synesthesia

The combination of two senses in a person's perception where the senses are deeply related, such as tasting colors or hearing textured sounds.

Daniel

An individual with synesthesia who memorized pi ($3.14$) to $22,000$ decimal places.