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Sensory   /sˈɛnsəri/   Listen
Sensory

adjective
1.
Of a nerve fiber or impulse originating outside and passing toward the central nervous system.  Synonyms: centripetal, receptive.
2.
Involving or derived from the senses.  Synonym: sensorial.  "Sensory channels"
3.
Relating to or concerned in sensation.  Synonym: sensational.  "Sensory organs"



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"Sensory" Quotes from Famous Books



... evidence has been proffered to her Society on the matter. And then, to my amazement, she accepts as fact the proposition that some men on the battlefield have been "hallucinated," and proceeds to give the theory of sensory hallucination. She forgets that, by her own showing, there is no reason to suppose that anybody has been hallucinated at all. Someone (unknown) has met a nurse (unnamed) who has talked to a soldier (anonymous) who has seen angels. But that is not evidence; ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen

... chapters) that the reason that most of us find talking with people and arguing with them and trying to change their minds so unsatisfactory, is that we are not really thorough with them. What we really need to do with people is to go deeper, excavate their sensory impressions, play on their subconscious nerves, use liver pills or have a kidney taken out to convince them. Talk with almost any man of a certain type, no matter what he is, a banker, a lawyer, or a mechanic, after he is thirty years old, and his mind cannot really be budged. ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... there is some condition within the heart which starts the stimulus sent to the nerve centres. In pseudo-angina the starting-point is not the heart but some peripheral or visceral nerve. The impulse passes thence to the medulla, and so reaching the sensory centres starts a feeling of pain that radiates into the chest or down the arm. There are three main varieties:—(1) the reflex, (2) the vaso-motor, (3) the toxic. The reflex is by far the most common, and is generally due to irritation from one of the abdominal organs. An attack of pseudo-angina ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... the very least an important factor. "Whether the principal mental symptoms can be entirely referred," he says, "to the organic changes in certain frontal (and parietal) convolutions—the motor to those of the so-called cortical motor zone—the sensory to those of certain portions of the temporo-sphenoidal and parietal—must remain a matter of question," while in regard to the convulsive attacks, Dr. Mickle has in some cases been "unable to trace ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... thing went wholly, colossally mad! It whirled toward Brand, jerking around again as a searing on that side jarred its dull sensory nerves, then headed at last straight toward the stone wall of the ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst

... the student of poetry now recall the diagram used in handbooks of psychology to illustrate the process of sensory stimulus of a nerve-centre and the succeeding motor reaction. The diagram is ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... always been there, anchored in the same cells, parasitizing the same sensitive tissues that carry our olfactory nerve endings, numbing them and crippling them, making them practically useless as sensory organs. No wonder we never smelled anything before! Those poor little nerve endings never ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse

... is a satisfactory expression of facts, and that a synthesis of both which combines the advantages without the defects of either can be attained as soon as a psychophysical theory is developed which shall consider the central process in its dependence, not only upon the sensory, but also upon the motor excitement. This I call the action theory. In the service of this theory it is essential to study more fully the role of the centrifugal processes in mental life, and, although perhaps no single paper of this first volume appears to offer a direct discussion of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... hard to detect. Most, nay, probably all, of the so-called experiments in thought-transference which have been offered by "thought-readers," etc., from the public platform, have really had nothing at all to do with thought-transference, have depended either on abnormal delicacy of tactile and other sensory perception, or on the adroit use of preconcerted signals. It is only when the observer has complete control of the conditions (which he never has in any public exhibition), that it is worth while to conduct experiments between two persons in the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... system is notably affected. The sensory symptoms appear first: numbness and tingling of the hands and feet, pain in the soles of the feet on walking, pain on moving the joints, and erythromelalgia. Then come the motor symptoms, with drop-wrist and drop-foot. The patient ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... corner of her eye to estimate the chances of his being brought into the fold of reform by properly selected oratory. That at least was the character of contemplation she intended, but though she was so young that she believed the enjoyment of any sensory impression sheer waste unless it was popped into the mental stockpot and made the basis of some sustaining moral soup, she found herself just looking at him. His black hair lay in streaks and rings on his rain-wet forehead and gave him an abandoned and magical air, like the ghost ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... was paying but half attention to me. I could read his inferences from Judith's observations, and I could tell what she wanted him to infer. I seem to have worn my sensory system outside instead of inside my skin ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... Vernunft[Ger], Verstand[Ger]. soul, spirit, ghost, inner man, heart, breast, bosom, penetralia mentis[Lat], divina particula aurae[Lat], heart's core; the Absolute, psyche, subliminal consciousness, supreme principle. brain, organ of thought, seat of thought; sensorium[obs3], sensory; head, headpiece; pate, noddle[obs3], noggin, skull, scull, pericranium[Med], cerebrum, cranium, brainpan[obs3], sconce, upper story. [in computers] central processing unit, CPU; arithmetic and logical unit, ALU. [Science of mind] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... of the heart, the duodenum, and many of the important parts of the brain; they recognized the true significance of the nerves (which before their day had been confounded with the tendons), distinguished between motor and sensory nerves, and regarded the brain as the seat of the perceptive faculties and voluntary action. Herophilus counted the pulse, using the water-clock for the purpose, and made many subtle analyses of its rate and rhythm; and, influenced ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... of the sensation by the reaction of attention is supposed to depend on some reinforcement of the nervous excitation in the sensory centre proceeding from the motor regions, which are hypothetically regarded as the centre of attention.[11] The classification of the impression, again, is pretty certainly correlated with the physical fact that the central excitation calls into activity elements which have already ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... merely a more or less interesting set of sham appearances; that space, as men measure it, was utterly misleading; that time, as the clock ticked it in a succession of minutes, was arbitrary nonsense; and, in fact, that all his sensory perceptions were but a clumsy representation of real things behind the curtain—things he was for ever trying to get at, and that sometimes he actually ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... and masses of gray matter, but differently arranged. The gray matter is broken up into masses which serve as centers of origin for various nerves. The functions of the medulla oblongata are closely connected with the vital processes. It is a great nerve tract for transmitting sensory and motor impressions, and also the seat of a number of centers for reflex actions of the highest importance to life. Through the posterior part of the medulla the sensory impressions pass, that is, impressions from below upwards to the brain resulting in sensation or feeling. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... telegraph wires, to which they are often compared, nervous fibres usually convey impressions only in one direction, either centrally (afferent or sensory nerve fibres), or outwardly (efferent or motor nerve fibres). But the so-called motor nerve fibres include not only those that set muscles in motion, but those that excite secretion, check impulsive movements, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... The images of auditory and visual symbols in the growth of speech replace in our minds concrete images and they permit of abstract thought. It is dependent primarily upon the ear, an organ of exquisite feeling, whose sensations are infinite in number and in kind. This sensory receptor with its cerebral perceptor has in the long process of time, aided by vision, under the influence of natural laws of the survival of the fittest, educated and developed an instrument of simple construction ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... of substance, the "thing in itself" (or "the combination of matter and energy"); that our knowledge remains subjective in its nature; that it is conditioned by the organisation of our brain and sensory organs, and can therefore only deal with the phenomena which our experience of the outer world affords us. But within these "limits of human knowledge" a positive monistic knowledge of nature is still possible, in contrast to all dualistic and metaphysical fantasies. ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel

... imagination is ready and active; but it is not yet ready for the more difficult and complex picturing we sometimes require of it, for imagination depends for its material on the store of images accumulated from former experience; and images are the result of past observation, of percepts, and sensory experiences. The imagination can build no mental structures without the stuff with which to build; it is limited to the material on hand. The Indians never dreamed of a heaven with streets of gold and a great white ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts

... sake of brevity), the nerve-ending begins to distinguish between light and darkness. The better to secure this further purpose, the simplest conceivable form of lens begins to appear in the shape of small refractive bodies. Behind these sensory cells are developed, forming the earliest indication of a retina presenting a single layer. And so on, step by step, till we reach ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes

... the rolling wheels, the reverberations from the blast walls, a crescendo of sound, and they were free of earth. An accelerating, effortless flight, a faint tremor as they passed the sonic barrier, then no sensory impressions at all. ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault

... and deepest level is that of the understanding. Matter which permeates down through the sensory and memory levels, getting thoroughly into the understanding level, is not only remembered but is understood and applied, and therefore becomes of real service in our education. Of course it is clear ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts

... him briefly that there was one chance in a thousand of Pete's recovery; that the shock had been terrific, describing just where the bullet was lodged and its effect upon the sensory nerves. Andover was somewhat surprised to find that this queer person knew considerable about gun-shot wounds and was even more surprised when The Spider drew a flat sheaf of bills from his pocket and asked what an operation would cost. Andover ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... digitalis is the first action of a highly poisonous drug; the second lasting effect is weakening and paralyzing. On the other hand, the first action of a cold-water spray is depressing; it sends the blood into the interior of the body and benumbs the surface. The sensory nerves at once report this sensation of cold to headquarters in the brain, and immediately the command is telegraphed to the blood vessels in the interior of the body: 'Send blood to the surface!' As a result, the blood is carried to the surface, and the skin becomes warm and rosy ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... a minor trace of awareness in man not dependent upon the tools and artifacts of physical science—extra-sensory perception, psi. Underdeveloped, because with physical tools its development had been made unnecessary? Because having found the answers with physical tools, man stopped looking for ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... from external objects to the soul except certain motions of matter (mouvemens corporels), but neither these motions, nor the figures which they produce, are conceived by us as they exist in the sensory organs, as I have fully explained in my "Dioptrics"; whence it follows that even the ideas of motion and of figures are innate (naturellement en nous). And, a fortiori, the ideas of pain, of colours, of sounds, and of all similar things must be innate, in order that the ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... of several kinds; of these the simplest type, and the one most easily studied, is the muscular contraction due to the excitation of the sensory nerve endings located in the skin. Thus when the sole of the foot of a sleeping person is tickled, the leg is at first drawn up and then violently kicked out. An exhaustive discussion of the physiological and psychological features of reflex action is not called for ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... intensity, which is attained by selection of those sensory images which are significant. Thus the treatise praises the ode by Sappho which it quotes, because the poet has taken the emotions incident to the frenzy of love from the attendant symptoms, from actuality, and first selected and then ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... to superior training (as their parents believe) or to superior native ability. The supposed effects upon mental development of new methods of mind training, which are exploited so confidently from time to time (e.g., the Montessori method and the various systems of sensory and motor training for the feeble-minded), will have to be checked up by the same ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... revived by Bergson, though with different standpoint—Admirable nature of Bergson's exposition—Fallacy of, part assigned to sensory nerves—Conscious sensations must be subsequent to excitement of sensory nerves and dependent on ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... theory, to create full sensory hallucinations by juggling electron streams and molecules within the brain. But memorizing the entire structure of the brain was a lifelong task, since you also had to allow for individual variation, and that meant working with "tracking" ...
— Sight Gag • Laurence Mark Janifer

... observation of epistemological nature. A geometrical-physical theory as such is incapable of being directly pictured, being merely a system of concepts. But these concepts serve the purpose of bringing a multiplicity of real or imaginary sensory experiences into connection in the mind. To "visualise" a theory, or bring it home to one's mind, therefore means to give a representation to that abundance of experiences for which the theory supplies the schematic arrangement. In the present case we have to ask ourselves ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein

... abstract thought, invokes impressions produced by the senses, but does not comprehend sensation as practical sensory activities. ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels

... present at some of these dissections. They were the first to discover that the nerve-trunks have their origin in the brain and spinal cord, and they are credited also with the discovery that these nerve-trunks are of two different kinds—one to convey motor, and the other sensory impulses. They discovered, described, and named the coverings of the brain. The name of Herophilus is still applied by anatomists, in honor of the discoverer, to one of the sinuses or large canals that convey the venous blood from the head. Herophilus also noticed and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... beach to attract and hold attention was not only direct and sensory,—through sight and sound and scent,—but often indirect, seemingly by occult means. Time after time, on an impulse, I followed some casual line of thought and action, and found myself at last on or near the beach, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... substance of our life, While That from which we came, the Power that made us, Is drowned in blank unconsciousness of all? Does it not from the things we know appear That there exists a Being, incorporeal, Living, intelligent, who in infinite space, As in His infinite sensory, perceives Things in themselves, by His immediate presence Everywhere? Of which things, we see no more Than images only, flashed through nerves and brain To our small sensories? What is all science then ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... learning has been unduly dominated by a false psychology. It is frequently stated that a person learns by merely having the qualities of things impressed upon his mind through the gateway of the senses. Having received a store of sensory impressions, association or some power of mental synthesis is supposed to combine them into ideas—into things with a meaning. An object, stone, orange, tree, chair, is supposed to convey different impressions of color, shape, size, hardness, smell, taste, etc., which aggregated together constitute ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... the elastic membrane, just beneath the ectoderm, is a plexus or cobweb of nervous cells and fibrils. As in every nervous system, three elements are here to be found. 1. An afferent or sensory nerve-fibril, which under adequate stimulus is set in vibration by some cell of the epidermis or ectoderm, which is therefore called a sensory cell. 2. A central or ganglion cell, which receives the sensory impulse, translates it into consciousness, and is the seat of whatever powers ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... to the apparition of a door, abruptly seemed to melt into it. Barney held his breath, and followed. Again there was no sensory reaction to passing through the Tube. As his foot came down on something solid in the shadowiness into which he stepped, the living room in Sweetwater Beach sprang into sudden ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz



Words linked to "Sensory" :   extrasensory, sensation, sensory receptor, afferent



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