Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Explain in what way smell and taste stimuli differ from other sensory stimuliIdentify the five primary tastes that can be distinguished by humansExplain in anatomical terms why a dog’s sense of smell is more acute than a human’s

By Linda Bartoshuk and Derek Snyder, University of Florida. Humans are omnivores (able to survive on many different foods). The omnivore’s dilemma is to identify foods that are healthy and avoid poisons. Taste and smell cooperate to solve this dilemma. Stimuli for both taste and smell are chemicals. Smell results from a biological system that essentially permits the brain to store rough sketches of the chemical structures of odor stimuli in the environment. Thus, people in very different parts of the world can learn to like odors (paired with calories) or dislike odors (paired with nausea) that they encounter in their worlds. Taste information is preselected (by the nature of the receptors) to be relevant to nutrition. No learning is required; we are born loving sweet and hating bitter. Taste inhibits a variety of other systems in the brain. Taste damage releases that inhibition, thus intensifying sensations...

Psychology is designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders. Psychology incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.Senior Contributing AuthorsRose M. Spielman, Formerly of Quinnipiac UniversityContributing AuthorsKathryn Dumper, Bainbridge State CollegeWilliam Jenkins, Mercer UniversityArlene Lacombe, Saint Joseph's UniversityMarilyn Lovett, Livingstone CollegeMarion Perlmutter, University of Michigan

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the basic functions of the chemical sensesExplain the basic functions of the somatosensory, nociceptive, and thermoceptive sensory systemsDescribe the basic functions of the vestibular, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic sensory systems

In this video, I discuss the sense of taste and follow the path of taste information from the tongue to the gustatory cortex.
Duration: 1:57.

Taste (gustation), smell (olfaction), and touch sensory and perceptual processes. Vestibular sense, proprioception, and kinesthesia are also briefly introduced. Duration: 2:39.