08 Mar sensory transduction

There are two main senses:

1) (From the UniProt knowledge base) Protein involved in sensory transduction, the process by which a cell converts an extracellular signal, such as light, taste, sound, touch or smell, into electric signals.

2) The process in which any cell converts the energy in a stimulus (such as propagated action potentials) into a change in the electrical potential across its membrane.

Definition 2 may not technically be “sensory” transduction, but generic transduction. My suspicion is that there is no difference in the physical mechanism between receptor cells, which are associated with sensory stimuli, and all other neurons, which may be participating in more abstract cognitive functions largely independent (if that is possible) of immediate sensory input.