Sensory Transduction
Gordon L. Fain
Oxford University Press
Sensory Transduction provides a thorough and easily accessible introduction to the mechanisms that each of the different kinds of sensory receptor cell uses to convert a sensory stimulus into an electrical response. Beginning with an introduction to methods of experimentation, sensory specializations, ion channels, and G-protein cascades, it provides up-to-date reviews of all of the major senses, including touch, hearing, olfaction, taste, photoreception, and the “extra” senses of thermoreception, electroreception, and magnetoreception. By bringing mechanisms of all of the senses together into a coherent treatment, it facilitates comparison of ion channels, metabotropic effector molecules, second messengers, and other components of signal pathways that are common themes in the physiology of the different sense organs. With its many clear illustrations and easily assimilated exposition, it provides an ideal introduction to current research for the professional in neuroscience, as well as a text for an advanced undergraduate or graduate-level course on sensory physiology.