Senses

We perceive the world around us every day. Why? The answer is simple. We are equipped with a rage of senses which allow as every second to take in surrounding reality. We all certainly know 5 basic senses, sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. However, just a few people know the fact we actually have more than 20 senses and there are 7 basic senses instead of 5.

Are you asking, where we could found that more than 20 senses? Let’s look at, for instance, touch. Under this term, there is hidden perceiving of pain, touch, hot, cold, pressure and tickle. Every single perceived sensation is provided by different body cells. Then, rather than 1 sense, touch, we have 6 separated senses. It is exactly the same with for example taste. We can divide it on sweet, salty, bitter, sour and less known taste, umami, so we can suddenly see 5 new senses. The same goes for sight.  It includes color vision caused by cells called cones and black and white vision, used at night, which is allowed by rod cells. Just smell and hearing aren’t further dividable.

However, how we said at the beginning, we don’t have 5 basic senses, but 7. The two next senses are proprioception and vestibular sense. The first one of two here mentioned has its receptors placed in muscles, joints and bones. It allows us to recognize, where individual parts of our body are without looking at them. It makes us for example capable to touch our nose with closed eyes. Vestibular sense is located in the inner ear. We can determine the position of our head because of it. We also coordinate our movement and keep balance due to this sense. It’s concretely responsible for perceiving of direction and speed of our movements as well as that we are able to remain upright in a gravity field. Moreover, it could be divided into 3 separate senses, however, it’s not the purpose to know such details.

Then we have so called inneroreceptors, senses, which evaluate messages from our own body. They register if we are thirsty, hungry, if our bladder is full or empty or if we have the need to excrete feces. They also provide information about our inner temperature, heart rhythm and breathe rhythm.

Finally, there are few bizarre senses, for example chronoception, which makes us to perceive time, or magnetoreception, which allow as feeling magnetic field. That sense is fully developed in birds so they can recognize the north and the south. But it exists in humans in certain stunted form as well.

Why am I writing about that stuff? It’s quite simple. There is certain, relatively common, disorder called sensory procession disorder, shortly SPD. It can affect each of above mentioned senses, so it manifests itself in various forms. We will gradually study that disorder together, in the next 2 or 3 weeks. We will do so even though it’s not exactly any mental health problem, it’s more like related condition. Then our knowledge will grow and grow every day. 

Our 7 senses.