Many people have experienced what it is like to pinch a nerve or have a limb to asleep on them, but what if your body could not recognize if something was too hot. Many people have to deal with this situation on a regular basis because they have a Sensory Processing Disorder also known as Sensory Integration Dysfunction. These people do not experience the world the same way that most people do because they react based on their senses in daily life.
Before understanding Sensory Processing Disorder, one must understand how nervous system works and how the body interprets the information from our senses. Our nervous system has three basic functions, which are sensory neurons receive information from the sensory receptors, interneuron transfer and interpret impulses, and motor neurons send appropriate instructions to muscles and glands (Nervous Systems and Senses.). Our nervous system is made up of two types of cells, these cells are called "neurons"( Nervous Systems and Senses.). Neurons are made up of three different parts, which are dendrite, cell body, and axon (Nervous Systems and Senses.). The cell bodies of nerves in the nervous system make up the white matter (Nervous Systems and Senses.). The dendrite gets the impulse from our senses or another nerve cell (Nervous Systems and Senses.). The axon carries the impulse out of the nerve cell (Nervous Systems and Senses.). Our nervous system takes information from the environment through our senses and nerves fire a signal once it has reached the threshold for that stimulus.
Two terms related to our nervous system and sensory information is sensory processing and sensory acuity. Sensory Processing refers to the method the nervous system uses to receive, organize, and understand sensory input (Sensory Processing Concepts - Sensory Processing.). Sensory processing is considered the internal process of the nervous system enabling people to figure out how to respond based the environment with the uses of sensory information both around the person and from within the person's body (Sensory Processing Concepts - Sensory Processing.). Sensory acuity unlike sensory processing has to do with actual physical ability of the sensory organs to receive input (Sensory Processing Concepts - Acuity.). For example, a person's visual acuity refer to the person's ability to see; most people characterize one's visual acuity to be 20/20 vision, which reflects the accuracy of the eyes to see both close and distance objects (Sensory Processing Concepts - Acuity.). Sensory acuity is complete different from sensory perception from our senses, perception of our senses refer to a person's ability to understanding or make meaning out of sensory input (Sensory Processing Concepts - Acuity.). Sensory acuity is only a part of the process that receives the input accurately, and although it enables perception to occur, acuity only contributes for the physical information and not the interpretation part of the sensory processing (Sensory Processing Concepts - Acuity.).
Sensory processing refers to our ability to take in information through our seven senses, which includes our vestibular (balance) system, proprioceptive (movement) system, visual (sight) system, auditory (hearing) system, olfactory (smell) system, gustatory (taste) system, and tactile (touch) system (The Seven Senses.). Sensory processing from the seven senses is highly specific but also interdependent on each sensation by each other (The Seven Senses.). The central nervous system functions as a whole as if one part of the system biases than another; example being if one sensory system is hypersensitive, it can lead the whole system to be hypersensitive (The Seven Senses.). Most of the sensory integration system is multiple layers, for example, the tactile system has two layers; one layer is for discrimination and other layer is an alert system for central nervous system (The Seven Senses.). The two layers must work together as they are interpretations of information and for survival (The Seven Senses.).
The vestibular sense is our body system to deal with balance, for example, when someone gets up too fast and the room spins on them (). The vestibular receptors are located in the inner ear, the receptors are activated by movement of our head (Sensory Differences). The vestibular system gives our central nervous system information about where we are in space, as well as how fast and in which direction we are moving (Sensory Differences).
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