One of the most famous “Yoga Sutras” from the late Yogi Berra, asserts: “You can observe a lot by watching.” The senses are the instruments through which we perceive the world. Aristotle and many ancient thinkers mentioned the existence of five senses; Shakespeare called them “the five wits.” Today, scientists include, in addition to the basic five - vision, audition, olfaction, gustation, and somatosensation (touch) – other important senses, totaling around 33, including balance, and perception of pain (nociception), temperature (thermoception), movement (proprioception), and use of chemoreceptors that detect thirst, hunger, time of the day, and others.
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) opened recently another eye-catching exhibition called “Our Senses: An Immersive Experience.” It was prepared by Rob Desalle, Curator of Entomology and Principal Investigator at the Sackler Institute of Comparative Genomics, at the Museum. He also wrote an alluring book on the subject and with the same title. The book is a fascinating didactic and accessible exploration of the way our senses work, how they are interconnected, their evolution and limitations, and how they are associated with our artistic appreciation and our emotions. The presentation uses the most recent scientific advances, particularly from neuroscience. “The neural pathways for the big five senses are fairly well known, and the general theme of the route [followed is a] sensory pathways architecture I call ‘It’s complicated,’” says the author. He also mentions that our perception of the world rarely relies on a single sense and that no sense does anything independently. The parable of the blind men who try to describe an elephant by touching different parts of its body is a good example of erroneous perceptions.
DeSalle tells us that the brain is continually exposed to conflict from rival signals and that the big challenge is to decipher and process information properly. The mind, being exposed to previous experiences, “reconstructs” the information provided by the senses and tries to solve any conflict from rival signals. The author delivers a good discussion about numerous interesting subjects such as concussions, half-brain survivors, synaesthesia (one case is the association of colours and musical notes or numbers), ‘phantom limbs,’ ‘mirror neurons,” amusia (inability to detect a pitch), and other strange phenomena such as the case of Joy Milne who can identify Parkinson’s by smell.
Seeing and hearing are the two senses that have received the greatest attention, probably because we can measure their waves precisely; we also know that they are affected by ageing but with proper instruments we can improve their performance. Equilibrioception, or balance, is secured by the semicircular canal structures in the inner ear, but the visual system and the sense of where we are in space (proprioception) also help in keeping balance; and balance also decays with age, but it can be improved by balancing exercises. Taste and smell continue to be surrounded by mystery and both senses are strongly associated to memories and emotions (e.g., Proust’s madeleine). Taste has a strong interaction with our reward system; GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) and dopamine are two powerful neurotransmitters that explain our attraction (or repulsion) to some particular tastes. Scents and odors are another particular group as humans have a very large range of perceptibility; among animals, elephants have the most developed sense of smell (more than 4,000 odorant receptor genes) and humans have an average of around 750 odorant receptor genes, but also with a wide variation among individuals. A fascinating book!
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