Walking through the door I use my binocular cues as I glance at the party.

With so many different sensory directions, my selective attention takes me on a delightful journey to the smells of savory food. Likely, while mingling, and eating my food, Ill look around utilizing my feature detectors to find a familiar face. Stumbling upon some friends, habituation sets in with the music from the background while I carry on conversation. Although the lights are slightly dim, I can tell that the house is spacious through examination of perceptual constancies such as light colors painted from wall to wall. The appreciation of the vibrant, blue and green decorations, come from the combination of trichromatic theory and opponent-process theory to identify such wonderful colors. We are all so uniquely made, but how is it that our sensation and perception work so in'geniously.

The lighting of the party also known as the information, is collected as raw data and processed by the eye (sensory receptor), creating a sensation. The light waves enter through the cornea of the eye, passing the iris through the pupil (dilation and constriction taking place), and lens (accommodation occurs here) where light waves are then transduced in the retina passing through the ganglion cells and bipolar neurons. The retina is also comprised of rods (that enable us to see through the dim light at the party), and cones (responsible for our ability to see color (vibrant blue and green decorations) and fine detail (silk, plush, and feathery centerpieces). While the conversion of light energy takes place in the retina, neural impulses are being created. These impulses are received in the occipital lobes of the brain by way of the optic nerve.

The savory food sends a wonderful aroma through the nasal cavity, stimulating my olfactory receptor cells. These cells can be found embedded in the olfactory epithelium (mucus-coated membrane) and look like the end of a witches broom known as modified neuron with branch-like dendrites that penetrate into the epithelium. Neural impulses are created by the stimulated dendrites when the aroma (chemical molecules), pass through the air and into the nose. The axon transmits the impulses just below the frontal lobes in the olfactory bulb where my brain begins to process the very thought of wanting to eat.

Imagining what it would be like to smell but not see, or to see but not smell. Without sight amongst a spacious area, the sounds of music, the aromas in the air, the many voices, my mind would be overwhelmed with such stimulation. Confusion of my senses might keep me from properly identifying a pathway, a person, or an object. My need to be dependent on another would be necessary for my protection and safety, to lead and guide me. To live without smell is like to live without taste; the two are so uniquely connected. My imagination of diving for food at the party would utterly be curbed without the ability to smell. Our senses are vital to how we receive and output information, that to live without one, increase of our respective senses would need to work in excess to make up of the lack thereof. Our perception is altered when we lack the ability to use all of our senses.

-Written by Heidi M. Grap, Walden University Student of Social and Behavioral Science Division