BSc Plant Science with Industrial/Professional Experience / Course details

Sensory Systems provides an understanding of how we see, hear, smell, taste and feel. You will gain an understanding of the mechanisms that allow us to receive sensory information and how it is processed by the relevant areas of the brain.

BIOL21341 Pre- & Co-requisites are BIOL10832

This course aims to explain:

• how external stimuli impact upon central neural pathways to give rise to perception
• the nature and extent of sensory systems from periphery to CNS, with emphasis on the higher mammalian systems, but including appropriate comparative comparisons.
• basic elements of the cognitive processes involved in sensory interpretation and reaction.

Upon completion of this unit, students will be able to:

• comprehend the ability of nervous systems to access, integrate and interpret sensory information
• understand the common plan of sensory systems across species, as models for neuroscience research
• look beyond 'sense' to cognition.

1. Introduction to comparative sensory physiology - What is a sense? How do we, and other creatures, interact with a physical reality?
2. Chemo-reception - A "taste" of science.
3. Chemo-reception - Olfaction, the "world" of scent
4. The Eye - window on the soul? - Capturing light - in mammals and others.
5. Retina - "First Contact" with the central nervous system - how to convert light to brain messages.
6. The vision we don't "see" - Projection of information through secondary visual pathways; circadian rhythms
7. Comparative Colour Vision - "The peacock's tail and other colourful facts"
8. Thalamus - gateway to cortex? - Passive gateway or active amplifier? To sleep, perchance... to "attend".
9. The Primary Visual Cortex - The "beginning" of cortical processing - the human "condition".
10. "To V2 and Beyond!" - how does cortex communicate information - hierarchy or "cloud"?
11. Higher Visual Cortices - ....when things go wrong - amblyopia, blindsight, neglect and other short stories...
12. Feed-back Session! The chance to work through exam question/answers
13. From ear to hear - What is sound? Sound in the air; "sound" for other animals
14. Cochlea - transduction, amplification and more - Hair cells, fluid mechanics and the "I-pod" generation!
15. From hearing to speaking - Central "interpretation" of sounds - and language, from bats to whales, and us.
16. Mechanoreceptors - The basic unit of the somatic sense
17. Mechanoreceptors - Understanding mechanotransduction - "feeling" your way....
18. Somatosensory Pathways and the Somatosensory Cortex - From skin to the spinal cord and higher - through thalamus to cortex.
19. Whiskers and Barrels - Specialisation in somatosensation - the rodent whisker system
20. Pain - The "sense" of nociception and "feeling of pain".... sense to perception.
21. Somatosensation: Cognition and decision - Plasticity, Phantom Limbs and other "higher" aspects of somatosenation
22. Cognition & Sense(s) - Integration of cortical senses.

e-Learning Activity

All lecture material will be offered in advance on Blackboard. An appropriate mini-exam will be provided for ~week 7 and a forum for discussion. "Interesting examples" of non-lecture materials, designed to highlight aspects of the lecture-based material, will be provided.

2 on-line MCQ tests (5% each), in weeks ~7 and 11, and a 1.5 hour written examination (90%) in MCQ + short answer format, covering all aspects of the course, lecture-based or Blackboard. It will include 30 MCQ's and 3 sections of short answer questions with a choice of 2/3 questions in each section ie 6 questions in total. (It is therefore suggested that students spend 30 minutes on MCQ's and 60 minutes on short answers.)

All students are given the Unit Coordinator’s email address for questions or comment, as well as being encouraged to contact lecturing staff immediately following the lecture, or later by email or in the Blackboard discussion forum. Mid-sessional formative assessment / feedback. Post-exam guidance.