Visual, Auditory, Tactile, Vestibular & Proprioceptive Inputs

Sensory systems are the peripheral parts of the nervous system responsible for the transformation of physical stimuli into a neural code.

Receptors of each sensory system are sensitive to a distinct kind of energy, like the hair cells of the inner ear to sound energy and the mechanoreceptors of the tactile system to mechanical energy or the visual receptors to electromagnetic energy.

Each system encodes four essential features of a stimulus. Besides stimulus modality, these are intensity, duration, and spatial location. Vision, hearing, kinesthesia, and touch serve as initial functions for generating information within the central nervous system (CNS), which in turn contributes sensations and bottom-up input to perception and up to higher cognition.