Do you remember being taught in school that there are only five senses? Well, it seems that the general consensus on that is changing quite a bit. It has been said that a particularly sharp person may be able to use up to 12 senses.
Human senses reach far beyond the simple, traditional five senses of hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, and tasting.
Here’s a lesson people weren’t taught in school.
1. Ovulation Sense
Right off the bat, this is a weird one. Scientific evidence has confirmed that a man sort of hormonally, instinctively knows when a woman is ovulating and is fertile, and he becomes more attracted to her because of it, increasing the chances of reproduction. Nature knows best, people should have more kids and do what nature intends.
If the study was really correct, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin found that T-shirts previously worn by women determined men could be able to smell when women are the most fertile, past all cosmetics, perfumes, ect.
UT Austin psychology professor Devendra Singh asked women to wear one particular T-shirt at night during nothing but the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycle (after their previous period, 13-15 days), and after that, proceed to wear a different T-shirt during the infertile phase of the cycle, days 21 to 22.
After that, Singh presented those shirts to a group of men and simply asked them to rate the smell of the clothes. Out of all 21 pairs of T-shirts, a more “sexy” or “pleasant” scent was detected in 15 pairs of them. 15 of the 42 shirts were considered pleasant and the rest were considered undetectable. Pheromones are real.
Temperature: can you feel the heat emanating off something or the cold, without touching it? This is a sense, never forget it.
3. Perception of lies
Would you consider a resilience to manipulation, an ability to smell lies a sense? Plenty of experts do, not that relying on the word of experts is necessary to developing an understanding.
When you can tell a smile is fake, when you know exactly when someone is telling the truth or not through no explainable means rather than intuition, you’re using this sense. It has been reported that a number of expert “human lie detectors” exist.
Imagine what would happen if you lost your ability to see. Did you know blind people adapt to their blindness and acquire something they call blindsight?
Psychologists study this phenomenon, in which people respond to visual information without even seeing it, like building a picture in the mind’s eye. Conscious vision is dependent on the primary visual cortex of the brain, but people have demonstrated blindsight even with this area of the brain damaged.
It has been suggested that different areas of the brain control unconscious visual perception. Ever see things when you close your eyes? That may be like blindsight.
(Image credit: reddit)
It is suspected by researchers that some individuals are capable of seeing a wider color spectrum than the rest of us. People with four cones in their eyes exist, who might see a whole other range of color. So called Tetrachromats may see a hundred million recognizable colors, with shades for which there are no name.
A neuroscientist from Newcastle University named Gabriele Jordan and her colleagues have been searching for people like this, and they reportedly found one: only referred to as cDa29 in the literature, a doctor living in northern England.
Ever heard of the sense of balance? Ever had that sense in you damaged when your hearing was damaged?
This sense helps humans and all kinds of animals prevent from falling over, a critical thing to do. Balance is a combination effect from various body systems, including the eyes, ears, and body’s sense of where it is in space, known as proprioception.
7. Sense of “fats”
This is off. Scientists believe a key connection exists between our sense of smell and the part of the brain tasked with regulating our metabolism. “People with eating disorders sometimes have a hard time controlling how much food they are eating and they have a lot of cravings,” said Riera.
“We think olfactory neurons are very important for controlling pleasure of food and if we have a way to modulate this pathway, we might be able to block cravings in these people and help them with managing their food intake.”
(Image credit: healthysniper)