While we use our senses every day, we usually do not tend to think about them very much unless some kind of illness, injury or other problem causes us a temporary or permanent problem. For most of us we have five senses, maybe six, and they do what they do. However, scientists believe it is much more complicated than just five senses, and it is amazing what they can do that you may not have ever known.
10. Infrasound Could Be A Scientific Explanation For Some Hauntings
Many people have been to a haunted house and reported feeling chills, presences, sounds or all sorts of other strange phenomena. And of course, plenty of people report these things outside of haunted houses — or at least outside of well known ones. Belief in ghosts and hauntings goes back forever, and is one of those things that is hard to convince someone of if they don’t believe, and even harder to convince someone against if they have had an actual experience of some kind.
However, while it is always possible some people are experiencing something otherworldly, there are also scientific theories that could at least explain some of the things that people claim to be feeling. The thing is that sounds known as infrasound that can affect us, but are outside of the spectrum of audible hearing, could potentially be responsible for some of those weird feelings you get in old houses. A drafty old house that is constantly settling could have all sorts of infrasound pockets, and these could trigger your fight, flight or freeze response, and cause you to think all sorts of things if you include the power of suggestion. Movies like Paranormal Activity have made use of infrasound in an attempt to make their movie scarier without you even realizing what was going on.
9. Some Blind People Can Use Sound Waves To Perform Echolocation
We’ve all heard of the comic hero Daredevil, the blind man who has incredibly powerful hearing and can use it to see a perfect sonar picture of everything. In one situation when it is raining he can see so well with sonar he gets a perfect picture of a woman’s face. Many people have also heard that blind people get an increased sense of hearing, and that if they use this properly it can make a big difference.
As like many things, there are levels of truth. Some blind people have claimed to learn to use echolocation to an incredible degree, but it is not a popular method of orientation and mobility. One man in California who is blind uses this skill to mountain bike and claims he can train others. There was also a boy, now deceased, who claimed to have taught himself how to play basketball while blind by using echolocation. While the ability of most fully blind people to do this is somewhat in doubt as it is not widely practiced, perhaps in the future many people will be mini-daredevils. This does not necessarily mean they will ever be able to see someone’s face in the rain, but being able to effectively play basketball with sighted people and mountain bike while fully blind is still pretty cool.
8. If We Harness It Properly, Smell Can Be A Powerful Memory Trigger
One sense we often don’t think of to use as a tool all that much is smell. Sure, we may use it when sussing out if food is good or not, but apart from that we don’t really think of it that much. However, the truth is that smell has a really useful purpose most people don’t know about. Smell is believed to be the most powerful memory trigger of all, and if you can use it properly you can really boost your ability to remember important things.
There are also relatively easy ways to practically do this. If you are studying for a test, you could make sure to use a chapstick or lip balm that will have the same smell as one you use during the test. As long as your test allows lip balm, you aren’t breaking any rules by using it to power your memory. This also ties into context dependent memory in general, which means that if things are the same context in as many ways as possible, you are more likely to remember. You could boost the power of the smell trick by studying for the test in a room that is as similar as possible of an environment, desk and look as well, to increase your memory power further.
7. An Anechoic Chamber Can Make Us Hear Things We Normally Wouldn’t
If you have ever wondered what it is like to truly be without any form of sight or sound feedback at all, there are experimental chambers where you can go to do this. Back in the day, the closest thing you could get was going to a place like Mammoth Cave deep underground, and having everyone turn off their lights for a bit. Of course, even in this situation no one is truly completely quiet, but an anechoic chamber removes all sound, and some are built to remove all light as well.
The chambers have mainly been designed so that researchers can better understand the relationship between the feedback we hear or see and how our senses perceive it and translate that to our brain. The interesting thing is that when people cannot hear, they usually either hear things that aren’t there, or claim to hear their own lungs, or other internal organs working. In the special float tanks designed to take away sight as well, some people also report visual hallucinations that weren’t there as well. Researchers believe that this is likely because our brains are so used to feedback that when we don’t receive any, we make something up instead.
6. You Think New Things Taste Like Chicken Because It Is A Mostly Blank Template
You’ve almost certainly heard the phrase “it tastes like chicken”, in fact, there is a good chance you have said it yourself. Some people who are philosophical have speculated on this and wondered whether it is that most things actually taste like chicken, or that chicken is somehow compared to a lot of new things for some reason, even if it is not similar. With all sorts of diseases and other major things out there, scientists set out to answer this very important question.
Studies on this showed that the reason we do this is because chicken actually has a very neutral flavor profile and texture when it has not been heavily seasoned and nothing particularly special has been done with it. It is also a food that pretty much every culture on earth is very familiar with and uses as a blank slate to create all sorts of dishes. This means that when you say that something tastes like chicken, it really means you are eating a new food that also has little flavor profile on its own, and is likely lightly seasoned in order to introduce you to it.
5. Everyone Has A Unique Smell And It Is A Proven Part Of Sexual Attraction
When it comes to smell, most of us are of course aware of how we smell and how others around us smell as well. We shower regularly and wear deodorant or even perfumes. Many people who are looking for romantic or sexual partners will go to greater lengths in this regard, however, there is more to smell and especially more to your smell when you are dating than just showering regularly and using the right cologne.
Scientific research has proven that people all have their own unique smell, regardless of their cologne or showering habits, and that a big part of this is genetic. You might have even noticed that a family visiting your house, even if they all use different soaps, will have a similar smell about them that is unfamiliar to your home if they aren’t around a lot. This smell can be involved in sexual attraction, although the question of chicken or egg can be a difficult one. In a scientific study women were tested with clothes from both their partner and a stranger without knowing which was which. The women reported feeling a sense of well being with their partners clothes, but had increased cortisol levels with the strangers clothes. However, while this proves a partner is attracted to their partner’s smell, it does not necessarily mean the smell initially attracted them.
4. Humans May Actually Have A Danger Sense Of A Sort
Many people like to talk about having a sixth sense of some sort, or an ability to feel hunches or the like. Some people will swear by this and claim that they simply know when danger is coming and that they can feel it. Others argue this is a claim in the supernatural, and hard to prove at the very least. However, some researchers believe that there is more physiological evidence for this than most realize.
The truth is that we may actually have a sort of innate danger sense that we can even train ourselves to understand and utilize better, but it isn’t anything particularly mystical. The fact of the matter is that we don’t actually have five senses. Some scientists say we have more than twenty, and others say we have more than thirty. Your body is constantly giving you all kinds of feedback you don’t even realize and sending it all to that amazing brain of yours. Your brain actually can quickly put a picture of things together, and tell if something is abnormal. This will set off physical alarm bells like goosebumps, adrenaline rushes or the like.
3. Alcohol Tricks Us Into Thinking It Is Warming Us Up While Robbing Our Body Heat
One belief many people have about alcohol is that it can actually warm our body up, and is great especially if we get lost out in the cold. There are even paintings and cartoons showing the famous St. Bernard rescue dog with a keg of brandy on his neck. Now, there were brave St. Bernards who long ago made their fluffy way through the alps helping lost travelers in the cold, but there is no evidence that they ever carried brandy, and little evidence they ever carried a keg of any kind of non-alcoholic liquid either. The entire idea of the keg is based on a painting by an Englishman who liked to draw animals.
The reason none of this was actually done was because drinking brandy or other alcohol will make you temporarily feel warmer, but it isn’t actually good for someone who is in need of emergency care. The reason for this is that alcohol is sending blood to your extremities and quickly warming you up, but this rush also quickly loses your body that heat.
2. Diving Too Deep Can Mess With Your Senses And Disorient You
Any kind of deep diving always presents a certain element of danger, as there are a myriad of things that could cause you death or injury. Down deep almost anything wrong with your equipment could be a serious issue, and if you don’t estimate your oxygen properly you could have trouble getting back in time — there is also the rare danger of sea creatures attacking. However, even experienced divers with perfectly functioning equipment can still end up in trouble and get lost underneath the water. For this reason, most divers go with at least one partner.
The issue is something called nitrogen narcosis that can affect your brain when you are deep underwater. The deeper you go and the greater the pressure gets, the more concentrated the air you are breathing from the tank. If you don’t regulate your breath very carefully, it is easy to get way too much nitrogen. Scientists do not entirely understand it as it is not something you can ethically test, but they believe that it slows down the cognitive process and can cause confusion . This is why some extremely experienced divers can get so confused by their own senses that they end up unable to realize which is up from down, even by watching their bubbles — if nothing else because that thought does not occur to them.
1. When You’re Distracted, You Can Both See And Miss Something Right In Front Of You
Most of us tend to think pretty highly of our own ability to observe our surroundings. While we may not all think of ourselves as Sherlock Holmes, we do like to believe that if something silly or ridiculous happened right in front of us, we would notice it. Now, we all know that magicians can use sleight of hand to make us miss stuff, but usually it involves doing something really fast, while putting something in front of the thing they don’t want us to see. Most of the time they aren’t actually showing us what is happening directly, although this is sometimes implemented.
One of the most well known examples of this does not come from magicians, but from a video that psychologists like to use to teach students about how easily we can miss things and how we can be tricked. The video shows several people tossing a basketball back and forth. You are asked to watch the video and see how many times the people pass the basketball. Most people are so concerned with counting the passes they don’t notice the man in the 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.