Receptors in your tongue’s surface detect tastes and they pick up the sweetness of the ice cream. Touch receptors detect the ice cream’s smooth texture, and other receptors sense how cold it is. They all send signals to your brain, which allows you to feel the sweet, smooth, and cold sensations.
SEE ALSO: 5 Cool Things About Ice Cream That You Didn’t Know
FAST FACTS – Seeing clearly
- You may think that you see with your eyes, but it’s actually the brain that does the seeing, just as it does the hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.
- Your eyes detect the light that comes into them from outside, and turns it into tiny electrical signals.
- Your brain then turns the signals back into images so you can “see moving, 3-D pictures of what’s going on around you.
The five senses
Vision
Eyes detect light and send signals to the brain, which produces moving images of your surroundings.
Hearing
Ears detect sounds and send signals to the brain, which identifies them as sounds you can hear.
Smell
The nose detects odor molecules in the air and sends signals to the brain so that you can smell them.
Taste
The tongue’s taste buds detect taste molecules in food and send signals to the brain so that you taste what you’re eating.
Touch
Receptors in your skin sense different types of touch and send signals to your brain so that you feel your surroundings.
WEIRD OR WHAT?
Years ago, sailors believed that wearing a gold earring would improve their eyesight (and pay for their funeral if they drowned and got washed up on a beach).
What color is that word?
Approximately 1 in 23 people experience synaesthesia, which means their senses intermingle. They might see words or music as colors, taste sounds, or hear a picture.
The muscles that move your eyes are the body’s most active muscles. They contract (pull) 100,000 times a day.
You won’t believe it!
Sometimes people who have had an arm or leg amputated (cut off) can still feel pain in the body part that’s missing. This weird and ghostly phenomenon is called phantom pain. And phantom itches are even more frustrating – there’s nothing to scratch!
Sweet
Cakes, biscuits peaches, mangoes.
Sour
Lemons, vinegar, fresh orange juice.
Salty
Crisps, bacon, pizza, ready-made meals.
Bitter
Coffee, dark chocolate.
Umami
The savoury taste of meat, meaty stocks, and cheese.
Skin sensors
Free nerve ending: Detects pain, heat, or cold.
Meissner’s corpuscle: Detects light touch.
Merkel’s disc: Detects light touch and pressure.
Ruffini’s corpuscle: Detects deep and continuous pressure.
Paciniam corpuscle: Detects vibrations and deep pressure.
What about you!
Have you eaten anything spicy lately? Chilli peppers contain a substance called capsaicin, which triggers pain receptors in your tongue when you eat them. That’s why they feel painfully hot.
In numbers
10,000
The number of taste buds on the tongue.
5
The number of tastes detected by the tongue.
10,000
The number of odors detected by the nose.
25 million
The number of smell receptors in the nose.
10,000
The number of times more sensitive that the sense of smell is than taste.
70%
The proportion of the body’s sensory receptors that are in the eyes.
10,000
The number of different colors that the eyes can distinguish.
120 million
The number of rods (light-sensitive receptors that work in dim light and
cannot detect color) in each eye.
7 million
The number of cones (light-sensitive receptors that work in bright light and detect colors) in each eye.
1.6 km
(1 mile) The distance over which an eye can detect a burning candle in the dark.