The nose and Sense of Smell

Thenoseis the organ responsible for thesense of smell. The cavity of the nose is lined with mucous membranes that have smell receptors connected to the olfactory nerve. The smells themselves consist of vapours of various substances. The smell receptors interact with themoleculesof these vapours and transmit the sensations to thebrain.

Structure of Nose

The nose also has a structure called the vomeronasal organ whose function has not been determined, but which is suspected of being sensitive to pheromones that influence the reproductive cycle. The smell receptors are sensitive to seven types of sensations that can be characterised as camphor, musk, flower, mint, ether, acrid, or putrid. The sense of smell is sometimes temporarily lost when a person has a cold. Dogs have a sense of smell that is many times more sensitive than man’s.

Human nose structure
Human nose structure

Human life will cease to exist in earthly atmosphere without fresh air. You get oxygen from the fresh air through nose. Here, you can call oxygen as the elixir of life.

Functions of the Nose

Absorption of Air from Atmosphere:The most prominent role of the nose is to absorb raw air from the atmosphere. The nose also processes it as per the requirements of the body.

Filtering Air:The function of nasal cavity is to filter the air fromphysicalimpurities. For this purpose, there are the fine hairs or cilia in the nasal cavity.

Humidification and Warming of Air:After its purification, the air enters the middle nose for humidification. Meanwhile, the nasal cavity also warms the air to match body’s internal temperature.

Olfactory Function:Nose is also the house for smell. So, you can define nose as the olfactory organ. Surely, none of you dare to enter a multi cuisine facility when there is blockage in the nose. The entire perception and appetite for the food goes vain without capturing its smell.

How to Fight Nose Diseases

Nose is the first organ of the respiratory system and has no excuse from infections and disorders. Inability to detect smell and to identify taste indicates a nose disorder. It is the most crippling disorders across the United States.

This condition also has a link with a number of congenital nose conditions. However, the most common among them is the deviation of the nasal septum. Such an abnormality devastates the looks. Meanwhile, it predisposes the individual to a number of disorders. They include epistaxis or nose bleeds, sinusitis or inflammation of the nasal sinuses, etc.

Common cold or rhinitis is quite common among all classes of people. It is because the nose counteracts with outside infection before any other organ of the body. The condition stays for a few days if you cure it with medication.

However, the prolonged use of nasal inhalers and sprays may lead to nasal polyps. In this case, the three ball-shaped turbinals inside the nose bulge out. As a result, they obstruct air flow.

You cannot take the nose for granted. It is an organ that can develop tumours andfibromas. These conditions may risk the existence of an individual. They need due care and diligence for treatment. Your nose executes the key process of living, that is, taking in oxygen and giving out carbon-dioxide.

Human Ear Brief anatomy

The ear is the organ ofhearing. The outer ear protrudes away from the head and is shaped like a cup to direct sounds toward the tympanic membrane, which transmits vibrations to the inner ear through a series of small bones in the middle ear called themalleus,incusandstapes. The inner ear, or cochlea, is a spiral-shaped chamber covered internally by nerve fibres that react to the vibrations and transmit impulses to thebrainvia the auditory nerve. Thebraincombines the input of our two ears to determine the direction and distance of sounds.

Human Ear Structure
Human Ear Structure

The human ear can perceive frequencies from 16 cycles per second, which is a very deep bass, to 28,000 cycles per second, which is a very high pitch. Bats and dolphins can detect frequencies higher than 100,000 cycles per second. The human ear can detectpitchchanges as small as 3 hundredths of one percent of the original frequency in some frequency ranges. Some people have “perfect pitch”, which is the ability to map a tone precisely on the musical scale without reference to an external standard.

It is estimated that less than one in ten thousand people have perfect pitch, but speakers of tonal languages like Vietnamese and Mandarin show remarkably precise absolute pitch in reading out lists of words because pitch is an essential feature in conveying the meaning of words in tone languages. The Eguchi Method teaches perfect pitch to children starting before they are 4 years old. After age 7, the ability to recognise notes does not improve much.

Functions of the human ear

We can hear with the help of one of the highly sensitive organ of our body calledthe ear. Audible frequencies help the ear convert pressure variations in air into electrical signals that travel to our brains through auditory nerve.

The outer ear which we see is called pinna and collects sound from the surroundings. This collected sound passes through the auditory canal, at the end of which there is a thin membrane called ear drum or tympanic membrane. The sound travels through a series ofcompression and rarefactionsthrough the medium. When one such compression of the medium reaches the eardrum the pressure on the outside of it increases and pushes the eardrum inward.

In the same way, the eardrum moves outward. When a rarefaction reaches its so the eardrum vibrates in this way. These vibrations are amplified a number of times by three bones named hammer, anvil and stirrup in the middle ear, which transmits the amplified pressure variations received from the sound wave to the inner ear. In the inner ear the pressure vibrations are turned into electrical signals by the cochlea. These electrical signals are transmitted to the brain through auditory nerve and the brain interprets the electrical signal to sound again.