In medicine and anatomy, the special senses are the senses that have specialized organs devoted to them:
- vision (the eye)
- hearing and balance (the ear, which includes the auditory system and vestibular system)
- smell (the nose)
- taste (the tongue)
The distinction between special and general senses is used to classify nerve fibres running to and from the central nervous system - information from special senses is carried in special somatic afferents and special visceral afferents. In contrast, the other sense, touch, is a somatic sense which does not have a specialized organ but comes from all over the body, most noticeably the skin but also the internal organs (viscera). Touch includes mechanoreception (pressure, vibration and proprioception), pain (nociception) and heat (thermoception), and such information is carried in general somatic afferents and general visceral afferents.
Famous quotes containing the words special and/or senses:
“When we walk the streets at night in safety, it does not strike us that this might be otherwise. This habit of feeling safe has become second nature, and we do not reflect on just how this is due solely to the working of special institutions. Commonplace thinking often has the impression that force holds the state together, but in fact its only bond is the fundamental sense of order which everybody possesses.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you need to seduce the senses to it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)