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Trigeminal Wonders

Our trigeminal system consists of multiple coordinated sensory inputs based on more than a dozen receptor types. As I often do to get a grip on a subject, I found it helpful to diagram various parts of it. As the book was getting longer and longer, we decided we could do without the diagram, so I’m presenting it here. It’s a representation of the major touch sensing systems we use for mouthfeel/trigeminal sensations.

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Every Odor’s Starting Point: A Biochemical Pinball Machine

If you know even a little about the olfactory system, you get the general idea that at the very beginning of any perceptible smell are numerous events in which odorous molecules bind to receptor proteins. This ultimately results in a neural signal being transmitted into the brain via the olfactory bulb. This was my starting point, too, but I decided it would be interesting to know how all that actually happened.