Answer
The special senses are vision hearing, equilibrium, taste, and smell.
Visual signals are received by the visual cortex in the posterior occipital lobe. Adjacent to it, anteriorly, is the visual association cortex.
Hearing signals are received by the primary auditory cortex in the superior region of the temporal lobe and part of the insula. Close by is the auditory association cortex that enables us to recognize familiar voices,, words or pieces of music.
Equilibrium . Signals from the inner ear go to the cerebellum and several brain nuclei concerned with head and ad eye movement and with visceral functions. Stimuli are routed through the thalamus to the association cortex in the roof of the lateral sulcus near the end of the central sulcus.. This is the area of the cortex that make us aware of our body movements and our orientation in space.
Taste . Taste or gustatory stimuli go to the primary gustatory cortex in the inferior end of the postcentral
gyrus of the parietal lobe and the anterior end of the insula.
Olfactory or smell stimuli go to the primary olfactory cortex on the medial surface of the temporal lobe and the inferior surface of the frontal lobe.
The orbitofrontal cortex serves both the both the sense of taste and the sense of smell.
Work Step by Step
General somatosensory senses include touch, ressure, stretch, movement, cold, heat, and pain.
Stimuli from sensory receptors travel to the postcentral gyrus whose cortex is the primary somatosensory cortex a fold of the cerebrum near the rostral border of the parietal lobe. Caudal to the postcentral gyrus and in the roof of the lateral sulcus is the somatosensory association cortex which enables us to make
cognitive sense of general sensory stimuli received.
