Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – The traditional five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch, aim to protect us from harm. It also helps us find food and can help us meet a companion or companion along the way. They frame the order that surrounds us and, if set correctly, reveal in front of us some natural beauties and wonders to our sight.
What the senses have in common is that they are processed through the brain. In fact, everything we see, hear, hear, smell and taste is perceived by our brain and could be controversial for many.
That’s right: it’s our brains translating the tiny invisible particles in the air from the smell of the bread in the stinky sock. Our brains can transform pressure waves or vibrations into a whisper or the pounding of distant thunder. Our brain can also weave the visible light portion of the electromagnetic radiation into a beautiful mountain, or the glow on our mother’s face. Our brain is able to recognize the infrared portion of the same electromagnetic radiation, like feeling warm sitting near a burning fireplace. It is truly amazing.
In the new season of the “Chasing Life” podcast, which launches this week, we will explore the many mysteries of the senses.
I am a practicing neurosurgeon and my first love has always been the brain, but telling the stories of this season was an opportunity to combine it with another love: journalistic storytelling. What I heard, saw, smelled, tasted and felt was absolutely wonderful.
Our five traditional senses may seem obvious, but they really aren’t. Each has its multiple and subtle aspects, with many differences. Take touch, for example. Some people like it while others don’t. Far from being just a sense, touch can be broken down into pressure, temperature, touch and pain. We are still learning how it all works.
Just last year, in 2021, two scientists working separately shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work by identifying a sensor in the nerve endings of our skin that responds to heat and other sensors that respond to pressure. And just this year, the two researchers published an article describing some of the possible neural basis of pleasurable sensations such as cuddling and foreplay.
Also, the five traditional senses aren’t the only ones we have. It may surprise you to learn that we have seven senses, maybe eight at least. You will learn more about the other secret senses that most humans have in this season of “Chasing Life”.
Also, we’ll see what happens when people don’t have a sense or a sensory component. We have an episode of inability to recognize faces, generally known as prosopagnosia, a condition in which people can see faces but cannot recognize them, sometimes even the faces of their family members. We will learn how people in the deafblind community have created a language to help them communicate better.
We will also look at synaesthesia, when two senses blend together to create a unique “synthetic sensation”, such as colored hearing, where sounds create certain colors. You will learn why synaesthesia occurs and how the experience is so ingrained in the individual that many who have it don’t realize (for a long time) that others don’t see the world the same way.
Additionally, we’ll take an in-depth look at psychedelic drugs, which distort the senses and separate us from our usual way, and can be used to treat mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
Animals and how they see the world
We started the season with an interview with award-winning science journalist Ed Young. He is the author of a new book, A Colossal World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Worlds Around Us.
And it explains how all creatures, not just humans, live in their “sensory bubble”, the very specific part of reality that is crucial to their survival and well-being. This phenomenon is called umwelt, a concept devised by the German Baltic biologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1934.
Ed takes us on a fascinating journey through the many mystical senses of the animal kingdom that lie beyond our sensitivity, beyond the reach of what we humans can know for sure.
Ed told me, “I started the book with this thought experiment, how to imagine sharing a room with an elephant, a bee, a snake, a spider and a bat. They could all be in the same physical space, but you would experience radically. different of that space. The rattlesnake would be able to sense “The body temperature of animals around them, the elephant can make low ultrasonic sounds that other creatures cannot hear. They stink a lot. . the other animals couldn’t figure it out. So, we are all trapped in our sensory bubble and look at reality. “
What’s really amazing, Ed said, is that each of those organisms, including us, thinks they have the full picture of what reality is.
Join us every Tuesday for Chasing Life as we explore the senses and how we make the world come alive for us so we can better live our lives.
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