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Author Topic:   How many senses are there?
Dr Jack
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Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 1 of 28 (201109)
04-22-2005 6:41 AM


I can think of eight, of which we have the first six:
1. Sight
2. Smell
3. Hearing
4. Touch
5. Taste
6. Heat
7. Electrical (like sharks, and many other fish have)
8. Magnetic (like some birds have)
Although thinking about it, I wonder whether hearing is just a specialised form of touch and smell is just a specialised form of taste?
Can anyone think of any more senses?

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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 2 of 28 (201112)
04-22-2005 6:54 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Dr Jack
04-22-2005 6:41 AM


There's that one... oh god, let me google a moment...
I have heard our awareness of the relative position of our limbs and body as a sense before. I can't find its name though, unfortunately.
aha! here's the dirt:
Kids.Net.Au - Encyclopedia > The senses
its called proprioception, aparently. And there are some others too.
This message has been edited by Tusko, 04-22-2005 05:56 AM

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 3 of 28 (201114)
04-22-2005 8:10 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Dr Jack
04-22-2005 6:41 AM


sonar, like bats and dolphins.
or does that count has hearing?
This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 04-22-2005 07:10 AM

אָרַח

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 4 of 28 (201116)
04-22-2005 8:43 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by arachnophilia
04-22-2005 8:10 AM


I'd count it as hearing, yes.

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Dr Jack
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Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 5 of 28 (201117)
04-22-2005 8:43 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by Tusko
04-22-2005 6:54 AM


Good link, thanks.

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1.61803
Member (Idle past 1504 days)
Posts: 2928
From: Lone Star State USA
Joined: 02-19-2004


Message 6 of 28 (202774)
04-26-2005 6:41 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Dr Jack
04-22-2005 6:41 AM


I am convinced there is a sense of nonsense.
Which is the feeling you get when you can not quite but you finger on it but you "feel" like someone or something is watching you.
I laid awake one night in my bedroom, I felt this feeling of someone/ or a presence in the room. But I was alone. Throughout the night I would awake and have the same feeling. I could not shake it. A viceral feeling of being observed, or something in the room with me. After a night of tossing and turning I awoke and opened my eyes, and on the ceiling directly above me was a scorpion.
I knew something was there, even though I could not hear it, smell it, taste, see it, feel it.
I chalk it up to a level of awareness animals share that trancends our senses.
**edit to add,, no "nonsense" jabs...
This message has been edited by 1.61803, 04-26-2005 05:44 PM

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nator
Member (Idle past 2170 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 7 of 28 (202779)
04-26-2005 7:02 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by 1.61803
04-26-2005 6:41 PM


The thing is, the scorpion being there could have been unrelated to that "feeling" you were having.
There are people who have that "feeling" and there really is never anything there, and there are people who have all sorts of thing come into their room and they never sense anything.
Also, it could be possible that the scorpion was giving off a scent or making sounds which you aren't conscious of but still are able to sense.

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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 8 of 28 (202831)
04-26-2005 9:42 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by nator
04-26-2005 7:02 PM


I was thinking that he might have seen it without noticing it -- like at the very edge of his visual field.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 9 of 28 (202838)
04-26-2005 10:02 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Dr Jack
04-22-2005 6:41 AM


Balance? I mean, c'mon people. You have a pair of organs for it and everything.
I wonder whether... smell is just a specialised form of taste?
If anything, that's backwards, and it would be better to say that taste is a specialized form of smell. But, as it turns out, taste and smell operate differently.
The sense of taste operates in two ways: the detection of salty and sour through ion channels, and the detection of sweet, bitter, and umami through g-protien coupled receptors. On the other hand, olfaction (the sense of smell) operates through (it is believed) the detection of the frequencies of vibration of odor molecules in the infrared range by electron tunneling.
Furthermore there's the sense of spiciness, which is the irritation of mucus membranes in the mouth, throat, and nose by capcaicin; as well as the astringent sensation produced by the same irritation of membranes by the mustard oils found in (duh) mustards and horseradish/wasabi. Actually there's a number of "taste" sensations produced by means that have nothing to do with taste buds but rather chemical/tactile sensations in the mouth; fizziness, the tingle of ginger, the vapor of eucalyptus and vanilla, the burn of onion, etc. "Taste" doesn't seem to be the right word for those because you can detect them with your eye membranes too. (Ouch.)
There's the sense of pain, which is not really a tactile sensation as it has its own nerve system. Consider the pain of an organ, or an upset stomach. Or a headache.
Can anyone else hear when a CRT screen is on? I can and it often drives me nuts. I know I'm not hearing it with my ears, though. How am I recieving that sensation?
There's the sense of gravity, I guess - how much force you have to exert with your muscles to lift something, or to lift yourself. That might simply be part of proprioception.

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Ben!
Member (Idle past 1398 days)
Posts: 1161
From: Hayward, CA
Joined: 10-14-2004


Message 10 of 28 (202840)
04-26-2005 10:03 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Chiroptera
04-26-2005 9:42 PM


Right. You can reproduce, in the lab, many situations where sensory information is not brought to consciousness, but affect the underlying "zombie" (unconscous) systems that could then give rise to the feeling of "presence."
A great one I heard in a talk about synaesthesia last night was that, in some test, a person who has synaesthesia for numbers (sees numbers with color) couldn't determine consciously what number was showing in a display (due to some specifics of the experimental situation), but COULD see the synaesthesia-generated color, and thus could accurately determine the number by simple deduction. How freaking cool is that?
Dr. V. S. Ramachandran @ Becoming Human: "Synaesthesia" (21:55 - 24:00) (requires Real player)
P.S. Great talk, of course. By the way, he talks about a COLORBLIND Synaesthete in there (just after the end of the section mentioned above). AWESOME haha. But of course, some things he says has to be taken with a "grain of thought"

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 11 of 28 (202858)
04-26-2005 10:44 PM


Besides taste and smell, quite a few vertebrates have a vomeronasal organ - a sense organ usually in the palate. Snakes use theirs for "tasting" molecules their tongues pick up when they flick in and out. Mammals use them mostly for seeing if potential mates are sexually receptive - bulls, for instance, curl up their lip and check out heifers' hindquarters to see if they're in heat.
Humans and the other great apes have a degenerate little VNO that apparently has no sensory nerve connections. The accessory olfactory bulb of the brain, which processes VNO signals in monkeys or bulls, forms in human and ape embryos but disappears before birth. And we and chimps have a bunch of pseudogenes for VNO receptor proteins.
Oh, and the platypus has electrical receptors in its "beak." I've read that they will ignore a rock thrown in their creek, but will immediately go check out a double-A battery.
This message has been edited by Coragyps, 04-26-2005 10:47 PM

  
coffee_addict
Member (Idle past 477 days)
Posts: 3645
From: Indianapolis, IN
Joined: 03-29-2004


Message 12 of 28 (202883)
04-27-2005 12:06 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Dr Jack
04-22-2005 6:41 AM


Does instinct count?

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PecosGeorge
Member (Idle past 6873 days)
Posts: 863
From: Texas
Joined: 04-09-2004


Message 13 of 28 (202938)
04-27-2005 8:23 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by coffee_addict
04-27-2005 12:06 AM


quote:
Does instinct count?
No, but common does!

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Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 14 of 28 (202944)
04-27-2005 8:36 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by crashfrog
04-26-2005 10:02 PM


Crashfrog writes:
There's the sense of pain, which is not really a tactile sensation as it has its own nerve system. Consider the pain of an organ, or an upset stomach.
I believe the technical term for that is nocioception.
TTFN,
WK

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contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 15 of 28 (202953)
04-27-2005 9:18 AM


The ears sensing balance and so forth are really accelerometers. Your balance state is calculated from discrepancies between the two sensors.
Some fish can sense electricla disturbances.
It is thought some birds and fish may be able to navigate by orienting against the planetary magnetic field.

  
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