In "The Disembodied Lady", neurologist Oliver Sacks tells the story of a patient who suffered a catastrophic loss of sensory function. She said, "I feel my body is blind and deaf to itself... It has no sense of itself." The patient's nerve damage was strikingly specific. What single type of neuron most likely suffered damage?

Question

A.  gustatory receptors
B.  proprioceptors
C.  olfactory receptors
D.  Meissner corpuscles
E.  rods and cones

Clarify Question
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
What type of thinking is required?

Gather Content
What do you already know about sensory receptors? What other information is related to the question?

Choose Answer
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?

Reflect on Process
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?

Answer 1

B.  proprioceptors

Clarify Question
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
        · What neurons give the body a sense of itself?
What type of thinking is required?
            o This is an evaluate question because you have to use logic to evaluate which potential sensory receptors might produce the symptoms that the patient experienced.

Gather Content
What do you already know about sensory receptors? What other information is related to the question?
        · You already know that sensory receptors send information from the environment to the spinal cord and then the brain to be processed. In all sensory receptor types except one, this information comes from the external environment. Proprioceptors provide information from within the environment of the body itself about relative position or movement of the body’s parts. If one was to loose these specific receptors, she might feel “disembodied” as she would not be able to detect herself moving.

Choose Answer
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?
        · The patient did not say she was blind or deaf, but that her body was blind and deaf to itself and had no sense of itself. Thus rods and cones, which deal with vision, is not the correct answer. Gustatory and olfactory receptors are responsible for taste and smell, respectively, and the patient did not exhibit losses in these senses. Meissner corpuscles provide information about vibrations and textures from outside the body, not from within the body, so this is not the correct answer. Thus, the answer must be proprioceptors, which do detect information about the body itself and its relative position and movement.

Reflect on Process
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?
        o Answering this question correctly depended on your ability to weigh and  judge, or evaluate, which the potential sensory receptors which would cause the patients symptoms if they were lost or damaged and unable to function properly. Were you thrown off because she said her body was blind and deaf to itself, thinking it had to do with vision or hearing? Did you remember that proprioceptors are the only sensory receptor type to receive information from within the body?