exteroceptive

Exteroceptive describes sensory information that arises from outside the body. It is distinguished from interoception, which concerns internal physiological states, and from proprioception, which relates to the position and movement of the body. Exteroception encompasses the traditional exteroceptive modalities—vision, hearing, smell, and taste—as well as somatosensory inputs originating from the external environment such as touch, temperature, and nociception on the skin.

Receptors located at or near the body’s surface transduce external energy into neural signals. Visual receptors in the retina detect light; auditory hair cells in the cochlea respond to sound waves; olfactory receptors respond to airborne chemicals; taste receptors respond to tastants; skin mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and nociceptors respond to physical contact, temperature, and tissue damage. These signals travel via afferent pathways to the central nervous system and are processed in primary sensory cortices and higher-order areas that integrate the information for perception, object recognition, spatial localization, and action.

The concept is used across neuroscience, psychology, and clinical fields to describe how organisms interpret the external environment. Disruptions to exteroception can arise from sensory loss, cortical lesions, or attentional biases, and assessment often involves the processing of visual, auditory, or somatosensory stimuli. Exteroception operates dynamically and interacts with other sensory modalities in multisensory perception.