Because we’re glued to screens all day long, we often ignore sensations other than sound and sight. Yet they are always working. When we pay more attention, we feel the rough or smooth surfaces of things, the stiffness of our shoulders, the softness of bread.
In the morning, we might feel the tingle of toothpaste, hear or feel the sound of water in the shower, smell shampoo, and later, smell freshly brewed coffee.
Aristotle said that we have five senses. But he also said that the world is made up of five elements and we no longer believe that. And modern research shows that we may actually have dozens of senses.
Almost all of our experiences are multisensory. We don’t see, hear, smell, or touch things in separate luggage. They occur simultaneously within the unified experience of the world around us and ourselves.
What we feel affects what we see, and what we see affects what we hear. Differences in the smell of shampoo can affect the perception of hair texture. For example, the scent of rose will smooth your hair.
The smell of low-fat yogurt can give it a richer, thicker impression in the mouth without the need for added emulsifiers. The perception of smell from the mouth to the nasal passages changes depending on the viscosity of the liquid we ingest.
My long-time collaborator, Professor Charles Spence of Oxford’s Crossmodal Institute, told me that his neuroscience colleagues believe the sense is somewhere between 22 and 33.
These include proprioception, which allows us to know where our limbs are without looking. Our sense of balance relies not only on vision and proprioception, but also on the vestibular system in the ear canal.
Another example is interoception, which senses changes in our own bodies, such as a slight increase in heart rate or hunger. We also have a sense of agency when we move our limbs. This feeling may be lost in stroke patients, sometimes even believing that someone else is moving their arm.
There is a sense of ownership. Stroke patients may feel, for example, that their arm does not belong to them, even though they can still feel it.
Some traditional senses are a combination of several senses. For example, touch includes pain, temperature, itching, and touch. When we taste something, we are actually experiencing a combination of three senses: touch, smell, taste, or taste, which combine to create the flavor we perceive in food and drinks.
Taste refers to the sensations produced by receptors on the tongue that can detect salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami (flavours). What about mint, mango, melon, strawberry, and raspberry?
Our tongues don’t have raspberry receptors, and raspberry flavor isn’t a combination of sweet, sour, and bitter. There is no palate calculation for fruit flavors.
We perceive them through the coordinated action of our tongue and nose. Aroma has the biggest influence on what we call tasting.
However, this does not mean that it inhales odors from the environment. When we chew or slurp, odor compounds are released and travel from the mouth through the nasal pharynx at the back of the throat to the nose.
The sense of touch also plays a role, linking taste and smell, modifying our preferences for runny or hard eggs and the velvety, luxurious goo of chocolate.
Vision is influenced by the vestibular system. When you’re on a plane on the ground, look down at the cabin. Look again on the way up.
Visually, everything is in the same relationship as when it’s on the ground, but it “looks” like the front of the cabin is higher than you. What you “see” is a combined effect of your vision and ear canal that tells you that you are leaning back.
The senses offer a rich body of research, and the Center for Sensory Research at the London School of Advanced Studies brings together philosophers, neuroscientists and psychologists.
In 2013, the Center launched the Rethinking the Senses project, led by my colleague, the late Professor Colin Blakemore. We discovered a mechanism by which our bodies can become lighter or heavier by changing the sound of our footsteps.
We learned how Tate Britain’s audio guide helps visitors remember the visual details of a painting by speaking to the audience as if the model in the portrait were speaking. We discovered how aircraft noise interferes with taste perception and why you should always drink tomato juice on a plane.
White noise reduces the perception of salt, sweetness, and sourness, but not umami, and tomatoes and tomato juice are rich in umami. This means that the aircraft noise enhances the flavor.
Our latest interactive exhibition, Senses Unwrapped, at Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross, London, allows people to discover for themselves how our senses work and why they don’t work the way we think they do.
For example, the illusion of size and weight is explained by a set of small, medium, and large curling stones. People can lift each one up and decide which one is the heaviest. The smallest things feel the heaviest, but when people put them on a scale they find that they all weigh the same.
But there are always so many things around you that show you how complex your senses are if you just stop for a moment and take it all in. So the next time you walk outside or taste a meal, take a moment to understand how your senses work together to feel all of your senses.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
