BIO 280: SENSORY SYSTEMS

Sensory Systems provides an understanding of how organisms see, hear, smell, taste, and feel sensations. In this course, we discuss the physiological and cellular mechanisms that allow organisms to receive sensory information. We introduce reflex pathways in organisms with complex nervous systems, and then compare these to how organisms with reduced nervous systems carry out stereotyped behavior. These simpler examples of sensory processing and behavior provide a foundation to understand how information is processed by the early stages of central nervous systems for more complex behavior. Our focus is on the mechanisms and sensory pathways the nervous system uses to process sensory information and control movement. Using comparative animal model systems, topics include sensory transduction and the sensory physiology for the best known sensory systems (olfactory, visual, somatosensory, auditory, gustatory) and models of sensory processing. We also ask: what can we learn from animals with senses that primates are currently not known to have, such as magnetic and electric senses? These are currently active areas of animal research.