The sense of hearing is often underestimated among all human senses, yet this sense is at least as important to human existence as sight. In some ways, the perception of sound is more reliable than the visual images that the brain translates in its regular functions. The human ear receives sound as audible wavelengths that are created by the movement of objects and other effects concerned with energy, mass and friction. Hearing helps not only to identify sounds, but to establish their distance and velocity. The auditory canal, the tympanic membrane, and other elements of human aural perception receive, amplify and transfer these sound waves through the nervous system for the brain to collect and react to.
Vision is the sense that human beings rely on the most for their information. The eyes take in a plethora of imagery as they witness colors, contrasts and other nuanced effects of light that may go unnoticed by the conscious mind. Decoding and using this information simultaneously is the job of the ocular organs, which include the lens, the retina, and the optic nerves among others. Human eyes are one of the most complicated organs of the body, and are therefore the most vulnerable to over-stimulation that can lead to distortions and incorrect assimilation of the data they receive.
The sense of touch is another of the most important human senses. This is because of all the senses, touch involves nearly the entire physical body. Nerve endings are affected by many influences. Temperature, pressure and pain are felt by 20 types of nerves, causing both instant and delayed reactions that dictate how a human being responds to their environment. Touch is one of the most influential human senses, affecting other sensory criteria for judging the importance of external influences and how a human being needs to react to them.
The olfactory organs are also highly sensitive, and the sense of smell can detect invisible chemicals with the epithelium, cilia and axons that exist in and around the nasal cavity, transferring information directly to the brain. In fact, it is believed that human beings are able to sense more than 10,000 types of olfactory stimuli, and the sense of smell can influence a variety of human functions such as memory, emotional states, moods, food choices, and even with whom a person chooses to live.
Taste is perhaps one of the most abstract of the human senses, due to the fact that it is most associated with personal choice rather than the laws of physics. Yet taste is affected by similar nerve responses to the other sensory organs. The taste buds on the tongue receive and translate ions and molecules into the categories (sweet, sour, salty, bitter) by which humans judge what they ingest. Receptor cells within the oral cavity transfer these judgments to the brain, which makes the decision as to the preferences of the person tasting.