Final answer:
Sensory transduction is the conversion of environmental stimuli into electrical signals in the nervous system. In vision, this process involves photoreceptors (rods and cones), while in hearing, it involves hair cells in the cochlea. Both senses transform different energy forms (light for vision, sound for hearing) into signals the brain interprets.
Step-by-step explanation:
Understanding Sensory Transduction
Sensory transduction is the process of converting a sensory stimulus from the environment into an electrical signal within the nervous system. The sensory receptors involved in this process are responsible for detecting specific stimuli and initiating the transduction pathway.
In the context of vision, the receptors are rods and cones located in the retina. Light waves pass through the eye's structures in the following sequence:
- Light enters the eye through the cornea and the lens.
- It then goes through the vitreous humor.
- Finally, it reaches the retina which houses the photoreceptor cells.
Upon reaching the photoreceptors, light induces a shape change in retinal. This triggers rhodopsin and initiates a cascade of events leading to the hyperpolarization of the photoreceptor cell, conveying the signal to bipolar cells, then to ganglion cells, whose axons form the optic nerve carrying the information to the brain.
Similarly, in audition or hearing, the sensory receptors are hair cells located in the cochlea of the inner ear. Sound waves travel through various media and ultimately cause stereocilia on the hair cells to move, leading to the conversion of the mechanical stimuli into electrical impulses.
Both vision and hearing rely on specialized receptor cells to transduce different types of energy (light and sound, respectively) into neural signals that our brain can process.