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We’re used to thinking about the basic five senses—vision, hearing, touch, smelling, and taste—but researchers are learning that there are a lot more ways that we experience the physical world, than through visual, audio, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory inputs.
Finding out more about all the different ways that we experience the physical world will help us to better understand how to create experiences in it that support both our physical and mental wellbeing. For years, design was focused on what spaces and objects looked like, but recent years have seen many designers begin to actively consider what it sounds like to be in a particular space or to use a certain object, as well as tactile and scent-related experiences in use—good practice for the even broader thinking that’ll come soon.
In his new book, Embodied: The Psychology of Physical Sensation, Christopher Eccleston goes so far as to talk about 10 neglected senses. His review covers balance and movement, as well as pressure senses, which include experiences related to flexibility, strength, and weight, for example. Breathing, fatigue, pain, and itch each get a chapter in his text, as do temperature and appetite.
The first two senses that Eccleston discusses, balance and movement, are often group by researchers into a category called proprioception, which is knowing where your body is in space. Writing in the September issue of The Scientist, Uwe Proske and Simon Gandevia delve deeply into proprioceptive experiences (“Proprioception: The Sense Within”). They detail how important it is for our daily lives that our sense of proprioception is not corrupted and the dire ramifications when it is. It’s difficult to walk or even drink a cup of coffee when it’s compromised, for example.
Also, in the September issue of The Scientist, Sandeep Ravindran reviews research on sensing cells found in unexpected spots, such as smell detectors located in places besides our noses (“What Sensory Receptors Do Outside of Sense Organs”). Ravindran shares fascinating findings such as the fact that Hanns Hatt of Ruhr-University Bochum: “found that an artificial sandalwood scent called sandalore activates an olfactory receptor in skin. Activating this receptor stimulated skin cells to migrate and proliferate more rapidly, leading to faster regeneration and wound healing.”
Some of the other senses in our lives can certainly use a little exploration. For example, anyone who’s ever gone on a walk in the woods with someone else knows that some of us have a lot better sense of direction, where they are and how they should travel to where they want to be, than others. How does that work? Also, some of us are better at judging the passage of time than others—why is that so?
Further complicating the whole sensory world is that some of us have synesthesia, which, according to Wikipedia, is “a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia). People with synesthesia have intriguing links between their sensory systems: for some, specific sounds consistently bring the same colors or scents to mind, for example. Many researchers are actively studying synesthesia, trying to learn how and why it occurs—which is a big step forward for people with synesthesia who in the past were often viewed with skepticism or suspicion.
It’s clear that as research continues on senses other than the basic five and synesthesia that we’ll be actively considering, and planning for, more than what we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste.
