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DISORDERS OF THE SPECIAL SENSES
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The four chapters in this section are concerned with the clinical aspects of the highly specialized functions of taste and smell, vision, hearing, and the sense of balance. These special senses and the cranial nerves that subserve them represent the most finely developed parts of the sensory nervous system. Dysfunctions of the eye and ear are, of course, the domain of the ophthalmologist and otorhinolaryngologist, but they also are of great interest to the neurologist. Some defects in the special sensory apparatus reflect the presence of systemic disease and others represent the initial or leading manifestation of neurologic disease. In keeping with the general scheme of this text, the disorders of the special senses and of ocular movement are discussed in a particular sequence: first, certain facts of anatomic and physiologic importance, followed by cardinal clinical manifestations of disease, and then the syndromes of which these manifestations are a part.