Although we use our senses every day, we usually don't think about them much unless some illness, injury, or other problem causes us temporary or permanent distress. Most of us have five senses, maybe six, and they do what they do. However, scientists believe there's much more to it than just five senses, and surprisingly, they can do things you might never have known about.
10. Some blind people can use sound waves for echolocation.
We've all heard of the comic book hero Daredevil, a blind man who possesses incredibly powerful hearing and can use it to see a perfect sonar image of everything. In one rainy situation, he sees so well with sonar that he gets a perfect image of a woman's face. Many people have also heard that blind people have heightened hearing, and that if they use it correctly, it can make a big difference.
As with many things, there are layers of truth. Some blind people claim to have learned to use echolocation to incredible degrees, but it's not a popular method of orientation and mobility. One blind man in California uses this skill for mountain biking and claims he can coach others. There was also a boy, now deceased, who claimed to have learned to play basketball while blind, using echolocation. While the ability of most completely blind people to do this is somewhat questionable, as it's not widely practiced, perhaps in the future, many people will become mini daredevils. This doesn't necessarily mean they'll ever be able to see someone's face in the rain, but being able to effectively play basketball with sighted people and on a mountain bike while completely blind is still pretty cool.
9. If you use your sense of smell correctly, smell can become a powerful memory trigger.
One sense we often don't think about using is smell. Sure, we might use it to figure out whether food is tasty, but beyond that, we don't think much about it. However, the truth is, smell has a truly useful purpose that most people don't know about. Smell is considered the most powerful memory trigger of all, and if you can harness it correctly, you can truly enhance your ability to remember important things.
There are also relatively simple practical ways to do this. If you're preparing for a test, you can ensure you use chapstick or lip balm that has the same scent as the test. As long as your test allows you to use lip balm, you're not breaking any rules by using it to improve your memory. This is also related to context-dependent memory in general, meaning that if things are in the same context in many ways, you're more likely to remember them. You can increase the effectiveness of the smell trick by preparing for the test in a room that closely resembles the surrounding environment, table, and appearance to further enhance your memory.
8. In an anechoic chamber, we can hear things we normally can't hear.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be truly without any visual or auditory feedback, there are experimental chambers where you can go to experience it. Previously, the closest you could get was to go to a place like Mammoth Cave, deep underground, and have everyone briefly turn off the lights. Of course, even in this situation, no one can be completely silent, but anechoic chambers muffle all sound, and some are designed to muffle all light as well.
The tanks were primarily designed to allow researchers to better understand the relationship between the feedback we hear or see and how our senses perceive it and transmit it to our brains. Interestingly, when people are deaf, they typically either hear something that isn't there or claim to hear their own lungs or other internal organs working. In special float tanks, also designed for visual deprivation, some people also report visual hallucinations that weren't present there. Researchers believe this is likely because our brains are so accustomed to feedback that when we don't receive it, we instead invent something.
7. You think new things taste like chicken.
You've almost certainly heard the phrase "it tastes like chicken"—in fact, there's a good chance you've said it yourself. Some philosophers have pondered this, wondering whether it's because most things actually taste like chicken, or whether chicken is somehow compared to so many new things, even if they're dissimilar. Considering all sorts of diseases and other important things, scientists set out to answer this very important question.
Research has shown that the reason we do this is because chicken actually has a very neutral flavor and texture when it hasn't been heavily seasoned or treated with anything special. It's also a food with which nearly every culture on Earth is familiar, and it's used as a blank slate for creating all sorts of dishes. This means that when you say something tastes like chicken, it actually means you're eating a new food that doesn't have a distinctive flavor profile on its own and is likely lightly seasoned to introduce you to it.
6. Everyone has their own unique scent, and it's a proven part of sexual attraction.
When it comes to scent, most of us are naturally aware of how we smell and how others smell. We shower regularly and use deodorant or even perfume. Many people seeking romantic or sexual partners will go to great lengths in this regard, but when dating, you need to be more aware of your scent, especially your own, than simply showering regularly and wearing the right cologne.
Scientific research has proven that everyone has their own unique scent, regardless of their cologne or shower habits, and that much of this is genetic. You may even have noticed that family members who visit your home, even if they all use different soaps, will have a similar scent unfamiliar to your home if they're rarely around. This scent may be linked to sexual attraction, although the chicken-or-egg question can be difficult to determine. In one study, women were tested wearing both their partner's and a stranger's clothing, without knowing which. The women reported feeling good in their partner's clothing, but increased cortisol levels in the stranger's clothing. However, while this proves that a partner is attracted to their partner's scent, it doesn't necessarily mean they were initially attracted to the scent.
5. People have different senses of danger.
Many people like to claim they have some kind of sixth sense, or the ability to sense things, or something similar. Some swear by it, claiming they simply know when danger is approaching and can sense it. Others argue that this claim is supernatural, and at the very least, difficult to prove. However, some researchers believe there's more physiological evidence for this than most people realize.
The truth is, we may actually have a kind of innate sense of danger, which we can even train ourselves to understand and use better, but there's nothing particularly mystical about it. The fact is, we don't actually have five senses. Some scientists say we have more than twenty, while others say we have more than thirty. Your body is constantly giving you all sorts of feedback, which you don't even realize, and it sends it all to your amazing brain. Your brain can actually quickly piece together a picture of things and tell you if something is abnormal. This will trigger physical alarms like goosebumps, a surge of adrenaline, and the like.
4. Infrasound may be a scientific explanation for some ghosts
Many people have been in haunted houses and reported feeling chills, presences, sounds, or all sorts of other strange phenomena. And, of course, many people report these things outside of haunted houses—or at least outside of well-known houses. Belief in ghosts and apparitions goes back centuries, and it's one of those things that's hard to convince someone of if they don't believe in it, and even harder to convince someone against it if they've had some real-life experience.
However, while it's always possible that some people experience something otherworldly, there are also scientific theories that could explain at least some of the things people say they feel. The fact is, sounds known as infrasound, which can affect us but are outside the range of human hearing, could potentially be responsible for some of those strange sensations you experience in old houses. An old, drafty house that's constantly settling could contain all sorts of infrasound pockets, and they can trigger your fight, flight, or freeze response and make you think all sorts of things if you engage the power of suggestion. Movies like Paranormal Activity have used infrasound in an attempt to make their film scarier, even if you don't even realize what's happening.
3. Alcohol doesn't warm us up, it takes heat away from our body.
One belief many people have about alcohol is that it can actually warm our bodies, which is great, especially if we're lost in the cold. There are even paintings and cartoons depicting the famous St. Bernard rescue dog with a keg of cognac around his neck. Now, there were brave St. Bernards who long ago made their furry way through the Alps, helping lost travelers in the cold, but there's no evidence they ever carried brandy, and little evidence they ever carried a keg of any non-alcoholic liquid either. The whole keg idea is based on a painting by an Englishman who loved to draw animals.
The reason none of this was actually done was because drinking brandy or other alcohol will temporarily warm you up, but it's not actually good for someone in need of emergency care. This is because alcohol directs blood to your extremities and quickly warms you up, but this rush also quickly drains your body.
2. Going too deep can disturb your senses and disorient you.
Any deep dive always carries a certain element of danger, as there are numerous things that can lead to death or injury. At depth, almost any malfunction in your equipment can become a serious problem, and if you don't properly manage your oxygen, you may have trouble returning in time. There's also the rare danger of being attacked by marine creatures. However, even experienced divers with perfectly functioning equipment can still get into trouble and become lost underwater. For this reason, most divers go with at least one buddy.
The problem is something called nitrogen narcosis, which can affect your brain when you're deep underwater. The deeper you dive and the higher the pressure, the more concentrated the air you breathe from your tank. If you don't carefully regulate your breathing, it's easy to overexert yourself in nitrogen. Scientists don't fully understand this, as it's not something that can be ethically tested, but they believe it slows cognitive processing and can cause confusion. This is why some very experienced divers can become so confused by their own senses that they ultimately can't tell up from down, even by watching their bubbles—if only because the thought doesn't occur to them.
1. When you're distracted, you might miss something right in front of you.
Most of us tend to value our ability to observe the world around us. While we might not all consider ourselves Sherlock Holmes, we like to believe that if something silly or absurd happens right in front of us, we'll notice. We all know that magicians can use sleight of hand to make us miss something, but this usually involves performing something very quickly while placing something in front of what they don't want us to see. Most of the time, they don't actually show us what's happening directly, although sometimes they do.
One of the most famous examples of this comes not from magicians, but from a video that psychologists like to use to teach students how easily we miss things and how we can be fooled. The video shows several people throwing a basketball back and forth. You're asked to watch the video and see how many times they pass the ball. Most people are so engrossed in counting the passes that they don't notice a man in a gorilla suit walking through the image and stopping to thump his chest. This is called inattentional blindness and is a well-known phenomenon among psychologists.