Sensation Health Dictionary

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Sensation: From 3 Different Sources

A feeling or impression that has entered consciousness. The senses convey information, about the external environment and about the body’s internal state, to the central nervous system.

Information is collected by millions of sense receptors found throughout body tissues and in special sense organs, such as the eye.

Certain sensory information, mainly that from the special sense organs and skin receptors, enters the sensory cortex of the brain, where sensations are consciously perceived.

Other types of sensory information, for example about body posture, are processed elsewhere and do not produce conscious sensation.

Health Source: BMA Medical Dictionary
Author: The British Medical Association
n. a feeling: the result of messages from the body’s sensory receptors registering in the brain as information about the environment. Messages from *exteroceptors are interpreted as specific sensations – smell, taste, temperature, pain, etc. – in the conscious mind. Messages from *interoceptors, however, rarely reach the consciousness to produce sensation.
Health Source: Oxford | Concise Colour Medical Dictionary
Author: Jonathan Law, Elizabeth Martin

Kinaesthetic Sensations

A term used to describe those sensations which underlie muscle tension and position of joint and muscle. These sensations send impulses along nerves to the brain, and thus inform it of the position of the limb in space and of the relative position to each other of individual muscles and muscle-groups and of joints.... kinaesthetic sensations

Sensation, Abnormal

Dulled, unpleasant, or otherwise altered sensations in the absence of an obvious stimulus.

Numbness and pins-and-needles are common abnormal sensations. The special senses can be impaired by damage to the relevant sensory apparatus (see vision, disorders of; smell; deafness; tinnitus). Other causes of abnormal sensation include peripheral nerve damage caused by diabetes mellitus, herpes zoster infection, or pressure from a tumour, and disruption of nerve pathways in the brain or spinal cord due to spinal injury, head injury, stroke, and multiple sclerosis.

Pressure on or damage to nerves can sometimes be relieved by surgery or by treatments for the cause.

In other cases, distressing abnormal sensation can be relieved only by cutting the relevant nerve fibres or by giving injections to block the transmission of signals.... sensation, abnormal


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