The Power of Senses..

It's funny how people say casually in a sentences "the five senses". Wait.. there are more than five.  I can feel them from here, just sitting. For the main event of sensing, each sensor is tuned into a specific sensation. How does one catalog these amazing abilities that everyone, or maybe not everyone has?

Let's start with our skin, our skin, the largest organ we have, senses sensations technically through nerve endings, so there is pain, pressure, itch, hot and cold. Our ears, of course have sound sensors, our tongues have chemical receptors for bitter, sour, sweet, salt, but it doesn't end at the tongue, there are receptors on the roof of our mouths (so does that count as the taste or a receptor of the skin?). Then there are our eyes, that sense different levels of light, colors, etc. Your nose, that has the sense for smell, but also tends to trigger a memory quicker than any other sense we have.

Odors are molecular so that method used is different from light or sound that come in waves, therefore triggering the memory from a particular smell. Inside your nose about the level of your eyes, is a small patch of tissue containing millions of nerve cells. The odor receptors (sensors) lie on these nerve cells. Each of the receptors recognizes several odors, and likewise a single odor could be recognized by several receptors. Thus similar to codes, what happens is that different combinations of the 1,000 receptors result in our ability to identify 10,000 different odors.How do certain smells able to trigger memories of events taking place several years ago despite the fact that sensory neurons in the epithelium survive for about only 60 days? Amazing in itself.

In your muscles and joints there are sensors that tell you where the different parts of your body are and about the motion and tension of the muscles. Not to be disgusting or crude, but your bladder and your large intestine, well, we know those sensations, and what their sensors are used for.

There are sensor for being hunger, sleep and thirst. Some people can sense the weather change,

So, technically, five is WAY too low of a number in explaining our senses.  My good friend Cindy, she always says "My Spidey senses are activated", and while, it's harder to proof, I believe it is still there, so, that is another realm of information to explore, document, pursue. Above, there are what, no less than 20 different types of senses? Can you imagine what all the others are that aren't explained by doctors and scientists?

The possibilities are endless. This blog brought to you simply by the meditative scent of my morning coffee.

A New Moo