Convergence of Your Basic Senses
September 11, 2024
Ever wonder why you struggle to identify a particular smell? In humans, sight is by far the most important sense. So it might be because you can’t see an odor. Through sensation, sense organs collect different types of stimuli, like sounds or smells, and convert them into signals that the brain can understand.
A sense is a biological mechanism that organisms use to gather information by detecting stimuli. The process of sensation and perception is vital for cognition, behavior and thought processes in humans; but non-human species also experience sensation-perception through unique sensory capabilities as well.
Many animals have a more acute sense of smell compared to humans, while some species might lack certain sensory systems altogether or possess highly unique ones. Recent theories suggest that plants and robots might also detect and interpret environmental information in ways similar to various animals.
For someone with anxiety, their heightened awareness and sensory inputs can exacerbate the condition causing symptoms like difficulty breathing, muscle tension, and rapid heartbeat. These symptoms occur in the body as its stress response strategy releases of epinephrine neurotransmitter and secretion of cortisol hormone in preparation for a “fight or flight” response.
How many human senses...
In grammar school, kids learn about the commonly accepted “five human senses,” which are sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. But humans actually possess additional sensory abilities that go beyond the basic five. These extra senses include spatial awareness and balance, primarily governed by the vestibular system in the inner ear. This system allows us to perceive our body's position and movement in space. Nonetheless, understanding the evolution of the five basic senses can help humans gain a more comprehensive view of how people of different cultures perceive the world around them.
Primary Animal Senses
The nervous system plays a crucial role in helping the body respond to its surroundings, communicate, and maintain overall health and safety. It relies heavily on sensory organs like the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin to gather information about the external world. These organs detect raw stimuli and convert them into signals that the nervous system can interpret. Once transmitted, the brain processes the info and sends back an appropriate response.
SIGHT – Vision starts when light enters the eye through the transparent cornea and then passes through the pupil, which adjusts to control the amount of light that enters. The brain and eyes work together to process this light, enabling us to see. This intricate process allows us to experience the vibrant and detailed world around us. For those who are visually impaired, senses such as hearing, touch, and smell may become more developed providing unique enhanced sensory skills.
SMELL – Olfaction is a chemical sense that enables us to detect and identify various odors. It functions by capturing tiny molecules released by substances in our environment, which then stimulate specialized cells in the nose known as olfactory sensory neurons. These send signals to the brain, where the odors are identified. Humans have about 400 olfactory receptors, and although this number is fewer than that of some super-smellers like dogs, the complexity of the human brain compensates for this disparity.
HEARING – The ear plays a crucial role in our auditory senses, transforming sound waves into neural signals. This process starts with the tiny hair cells in the ear vibrating and sending messages to the auditory nerve, which then relays the information to the brain. Essentially, it’s our brain that translates these signals into the sounds we recognize. The Eustachian tube equalizes air pressure between the middle ear and the atmosphere, while the vestibular complex contains receptors that help regulate equilibrium.
TASTE – The tongue plays a crucial role in our sense of taste, starting with the taste buds that detect different flavors. Humans have between 2,000 and 10,000 taste buds depending on age, and taste is categorized into five basic qualities: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savory (umami). Contrary to popular belief, "spicy" is not a taste but a pain signal indicating temperature and touch to the brain. Evolution helped humans assess safety to avoid toxic foods and potential nutrient richness for dietary support.
TOUCH – Touch is the first sense humans develop, playing a crucial role in how we perceive the world. This sense encompasses various sensations, such as cold, heat, smoothness, roughness, pressure, tickling, itching, pain, and vibrations. All are transmitted to the brain via specialized neurons in the skin, known as the somatosensory system. Interestingly, the texture and feel of objects influenced decisions, as humans gained insight into how touch interacted with their environment and influenced their choices.
Experts have explained how humans possess additional senses, such as the vestibular sense, which is related to balance and movement or proprioception, which helps people perceive the position and movement of their body parts. Bodily sensations are helpful as they alert someone of potential threats and indicate when something may be wrong with their body. However, factors like aging, diseases, and certain medications can impact the functioning of these sensory organs to affect how people interact with the world around them.
Hidden Insights into Cultural Senses
Humans are often characterized as visual beings, especially if you are a native English speaker, which has a rich vocabulary for colors and geometric shapes but fewer words for smells. However, it is culture that determines how we experience the world through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or feeling; and this varies significantly across cultures. Results show that people’s lifestyle, environment, and even the shape of their house influences how they perceive things and how easily they can sense certain perceptions.
A study was conducted across 26 languages from different cultures and regions. Languages like Umpila, which is only spoken by about 100 people in Australia, were compared to more widely spoken languages like 1.5 billion English speakers worldwide. The study measured codability or the level of agreement among responses in each group. A high level of codability suggested a group had an agreed way of talking about certain sensory experiences, while a low level indicated less shared vocabulary and difficulty in identifying them.
Interestingly, while vision is often considered the number one human sense, certain communities like the hunter-gatherers in the Malay Peninsula exhibited a much higher proficiency in naming odors than the larger population of English speakers. Comparison of a hunter-gather tribe and swidden horticulturalists in the same region, only the hunter-gathers exhibited high codability for odors, which suggests that their cultural role made them more attuned to smells. So, linguistic diversity plays a very important role in preserving unique sensory experiences.
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Multilingual lingual strategies in today’s global village require that you fully understand your organization’s linguistic and cultural needs. After all, it might be important for delivering your messages to better understand other group’s sensory convergence. Contact the language pros at ProLingo for help with your next project or event.
