Making developmental sense of the senses, their origin and function

The primary senses-touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing-connect animals with their environments and with one another. Aside from the eyes, the primary sense organs of vertebrates and the peripheral sensory pathways that relay their inputs arise from two transient stem cell populations: the neural crest and the cranial placodes. In this chapter we consider the senses from historical and cultural perspectives, and discuss the senses as biological faculties. We begin with the embryonic origin of the neural crest and cranial placodes from within the neural plate border of the ectodermal germ layer. Then, we describe the major chemical (i.e. olfactory and gustatory) and mechanical (i.e. vestibulo-auditory and somatosensory) senses, with an emphasis on the developmental interactions between neural crest and cranial placodes that shape their structures and functions.