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Dementia Awareness

Itch Surprisingly, this is a distinct sensor system from other touch-related senses.
Thermoception Ability to sense heat and cold.
Sound Detecting vibrations along some medium, such as air or water that is in contact with
your ear drums. This is fundamental to our ability to communicate with others.
Smell Our olfactory sense. When combined with taste pretty much describes our food.
Proprioception This sense gives you the ability to tell where your body parts are, relative to other
body parts (close your eyes and touch your nose).
Tension Sensors These are found in such places as your muscles and allow the brain the ability to
monitor muscle tension.
Nociception In a word, pain It is its own unique sensory system. There are three distinct types
of pain receptors; cutaneous (skin), somatic (bones and joints), and visceral (body
organs).
Equilibrioception The sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms
of acceleration and directional changes.
Stretch Receptors These are found in such places as the lungs, bladder, stomach, and the
gastrointestinal tract. A type of stretch receptor, that senses dilation of blood
vessels, is also often involved in headaches.
Chemoreceptors These trigger an area of the medulla in the brain that is involved in detecting blood
born hormones and drugs. It also is involved in the vomiting reflex.
Thirst This system more or less allows your body to monitor its hydration level and so your
body knows when it should tell you to drink.
Hunger This system allows your body to detect when you need to eat something.
Magnetoception This is the ability to detect magnetic fields, which is principally useful in providing a
sense of direction when detecting the Earth’s magnetic field. Unlike most birds,
humans do not have a strong magnetoception.
Time This one is debated as no singular mechanism has been found that allows people to
perceive time. However, we have a startling accurate sense of time, particularly
when young.
Humour Not defined as a human sense as such but very relevant to us, and last if not as
equally important;
Justice Again very relevant to our sense of self – our sense of Justice.

Because of Dementia’s impact on our cognitive ability it takes more time to process some sensory
information, and sometimes this can be overpowering and lead to confusion and many other symptoms.

To view this presentation online click here https://www.southerndag.org/Video/2018/aware102/

Notes and Questions

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