Sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. The five senses that we learn in our childhood are the five senses in which, almost from time immemorial, we categorize these links to the world around us.
However, scientists believe that the origin of these classes can be identified Even the Greek philosopher Aristotle was of little help. For many experts, If we want to talk about senses properly, we must consider the existence of others. From many others.
It is impossible to know exactly how many. According to some experts, they can exceed thirty. Most “updated” lists have at least more than 10 senses. For example, in her book “Conscious: What Animals Reveal About Our Senses,” zoologist and popularizer Jackie Higgins talks about 12 senses.
Higgins List, in addition to the traditional five, will add specific senses for color; pleasure and pain; desire; balance; Time addresses the body and proprioception (awareness of self).
There are many more who consider that. According to Margaret Crable explainsFrom the University of Southern California Dornsife (USC Dornsife), we place the number between 22 and 33 in the scientific-philosophical debate over the number of senses.
“Which is the right answer? It all depends on how you define things,” noted engineer John M. Henshaw in an article For Johns Hopkins University Magazine. Henshaw explains, for example, that There are four types of photoreceptors in our eyes (three cones and rods); Our skin, in addition to sensing pressure, which we conventionally consider touch, is capable of sensing cold and heat through half a dozen other receptors.
Perhaps we cannot classify all the senses identified or debated today. But at least we can see which ones are most important.
more than five
When we talk about hearing we are usually referring to our ability to understand sounds. However, the organ of hearing shares space with another sensory organ: the vestibular system. Vestibular system The main person in charge To help us balance.
Balance is a feeling that relates to the gravitational pull of our planet thanks to the fluid in our ears. This sense is important when doing everyday tasks like standing or running, but it also tells us when other forces might be accelerating us, like when we’re in a car. This is partly responsible for our dizziness.
As can be seen, sight and touch are the two senses that we can least express. In terms of vision, we have different photoreceptors that work more or less together to give us a coherent view of our environment. However, we use these photoreceptors to calibrate our biological clock. In other words, our circadian rhythms depend on light that our eyes perceive outside of what we conventionally call vision.
Subject to touch, those pressure receptors (touch itself) have differences and Those who are temperature. According to some experts, the sensation of cold or heat can have effects beyond what we consciously perceive.
Proprioception can be seen as the sense of space. about it Perception of our position and posture, where our organs are located. This sense allows us to make coordinated movements without relying on other senses, such as touching our earlobes, something we can only do by trial and error in other ways.
The senses connect our brain to the outside world. They allow us to develop and interact with a world full of stimuli. This definition of what a meaning is may seem vague, but it opens the door for us to better understand the bridge between the two sides of our being.
“We live in a world surrounded by different signals and stimuli. But we can only perceive things that our sensory organs are able to capture and transport to our brain,” explains Higgins. Interview by BBC News Brazil.
As we learn more about our minds and our bodies, we will likely find new ways to interact. Classifying and naming these interactions may not be as easy as it seemed more than 2,000 years ago. But nature is rarely useful with the human need to categorize.
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