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CHAPTER 12

HOW THE SOMATOSENSORY SYSTEM WORKS. TOUCH, PAIN, BALANCE, KINESTHESIA AND CHEMICAL RECEPTORS

In the language of wine we usually refer to touch as the sense through which texture is perceived. Unfortunately, this is a simplification far removed from scientific reality. Touch is nothing more than a set of stimuli to which others must be added. All sensory stimuli are perceived in shared sensory organs and generate sensations that result from their combination. Perceptions are an integrated sum of all of them. Explained more simply, they are completely inseparable stimuli and therefore are complicated perceptions to describe. For the Greek philosophers this was the least important and, at the same time, the most important sense: the one that was necessary in order to be considered animal and not inanimate or vegetable. If a person is blind, he can continue living, but can we live without the somatosensory system? If we understand touch as the haptic sense, then temperature, pain, kinesthesia and chemical receptors work together to create the perception of the wine’s body, weight, viscosity, astringency and temperature. The mouth has the greatest responsibility for this task. However, we have somatosensory organs located in many different parts of the body that also contribute. They are even found in the nose and add nuance and enrich olfactory perceptions. In this complex and illustrative chapter, we begin by exploring the sensory organs, then move on to study the somatosensory cortex through an examination of the different nerves that transmit these sensations. We classify and order all these stimuli exhaustively to, once and for all, stop talking only about touch.