Vision and Sensory Processing Choose another page. While our ability to perform such basic functions is often taken for granted, scientists at UT-Houston are studying exactly how our senses work. Specialized nerve cells known as sensory receptors interpret outside stimuli for us.
Sensory receptors convert a sensory stimulus, such as sound, into electrical impulses.
This method of conversion is similar among all the sensory stimuli, including sight, sound, pain, temperature, touch, smell, and balance. Researchers at UT-Houston are studying the way sensory stimuli are converted into electrical impulses, along with genetic defects that hinder this process, leading to conditions such as blindness and deafness. Extensive processing of these signals occurs before they produce any sensation, and in many cases, a good deal of information never reaches our consciousness. The sensory receptors and the way they generate nerve impulses, thereby making the body aware of the stimulus, share many common features, no matter what the sensory stimulus they are interpreting may be. Each of the different senses conveys its information to the brain by using nerve cells that are arranged in pathways that run parallel to one another.