When you first wake up, your five senses are not fully awakened and are not very sharp. The sunlight streaming in through your windows, the smell of breakfast , the sound of your alarm clock are all products of your environment, your senses and your brain.

The ability to hear, touch, see, taste and smell is firmly connected to your body. These five senses allow you to understand and respond to the world around you. Now let’s get into all your feelings.

Functions of the five senses

Your senses connect you to your environment. With the information your senses gather, you can understand and respond more intelligently. For example, a bitter taste can alert you that food may be harmful; chirping from birds tells you that trees and water may be nearby.

Sensory organs collect various sensations and interpret them in the brain. But how does information like texture and light get into your body’s command center? The body’s nervous system has a specialized branch that deals with sensation. You might have guessed that it’s called the “sensory nervous system.”

The sensory organs in the body (discussed further later) are connected to the brain by nerves, which transmit messages to the brain by means of electrochemical impulses. The sensory nervous system collects and sends a constant stream of sensory data from the environment; information about the color, shape and feel of nearby objects helps the brain determine what they are.

What are the five senses?

The body perceives five basic senses, which are hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell. Each of these senses is a tool the brain uses to build a clear picture of your world.

Your brain must rely on sensory organs to gather sensory information. The five sense organs involved are:

• ear (auditory)
• Skin and Hair (Tactile)
• eyes (vision)
• tongue (taste)
• nose (sense of smell)

The data collected by the sense organs can help the brain understand the diversity and dynamics of the surrounding environment, which is also the key to the reaction and memory generation at that time. Now let’s dive into each of these senses and learn how you gather information about the sounds, textures, sights, tastes and smells you encounter.

sense of touch

The skin is the largest organ of the body and the primary sensory organ for touch . The scientific term for the sense of touch is mechanoreception.

The sense of touch may seem simple, but it’s actually a little more complicated than you might think. The human body can sense different forms of touch, as well as different temperatures and pressures.

Because touch is felt all over the body, the nerves that detect touch send their messages to the brain through the peripheral nervous system. Peripheral nerves are the nerves that extend from the spinal cord throughout the body.

Nerves under the skin send messages to the brain about your sense of touch. There are specialized nerve cells for different senses of touch, such as different touch receptors on the skin of the fingertips than on the skin of the arms and legs.

Fingertips can sense different textures and pressures on surfaces, such as the feel of sandpaper or the pressing of a button. The arms and legs are covered with skin, which best senses the extension and movement of the joints . The skin on your extremities also sends messages to your brain about where your body is.

The skin on the lips and soles of the feet is more sensitive to light touch. The tongue and throat also have their own touch receptors, and these nerves tell the brain how warm the food or drink is.

taste

Speaking of food and drink, keep your mouth out of the water before discussing your next sensation. Taste (also called taste) allows your brain to receive information about the food you eat. While food is being chewed and mixed with saliva, your tongue is busy gathering sensory data about how your food tastes.

Tiny bumps all over the tongue are responsible for conveying flavors to the brain. These bumps are called taste buds, and there are thousands of them on the tongue. Every week, new taste buds replace old ones to keep your palate sharp.

At the center of these taste buds are 40-50 specialized taste cells. Molecules from the food bind to these specialized cells and generate nerve impulses, which are interpreted by the brain to let you know how the food tastes.

The tongue senses five basic tastes and transmits them to the brain. The five flavors are sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami; the last, “umami,” comes from the Japanese word for “delicious,” and umami comes from foods like broth and meat.

Typical examples of sweetness are sugar, sourness comes from foods such as citrus fruits and vinegar, salt combines with foods high in sodium to create a salty taste, and the tongue also senses it from foods such as coffee, kale and Brussels sprouts, and The bitterness of the drink.

Regarding the sense of taste, the previously accepted theory is that different regions on the tongue specialize in one of the five tastes. But this is no longer considered to be true, instead, current research shows that every taste can be detected at any point on the tongue.

So, during a meal or snack, your brain is constantly receiving messages about what you’re eating. As you chew and swallow, the different flavors of food mix together, and each taste on your tongue helps your brain perceive the taste of food.

At your next meal, see if you can identify each of the five flavors as you eat them. You’ll gain a new understanding of your brain and how it works so hard to discern food flavors.

vision

The third sense is vision (also known as vision), which is produced by the brain and a pair of sensory organs – the eyes. Vision is often considered the strongest sense because people rely more on sight than hearing or smell for information about their surroundings.

When you look around, your eyes detect light on the visible spectrum. The colors on the visible spectrum are: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The source of this light can be a lamp, a computer screen, or the sun.

When light bounces off objects around you, your eyes send signals to your brain, which creates recognizable images. Your eyes use light to read, identify colors, and even coordinate clothing to match.

Have you ever accidentally put on mismatched socks in the dark? Or arrive at the office only to realize your shirt is on backwards? This is why it is necessary to have a lamp in the closet to avoid misbehaving in clothing.

The eyes need light to send sensory information to the brain. Particles of light (called “photons”) enter the eye through the pupil and are focused on the retina (the light-sensitive part of the eye).

There are two types of photoreceptor cells in the retina: rods and cones. Rods are responsible for receiving information about the brightness of light, and cones are responsible for distinguishing colors; together, these photoreceptors collect light information and transmit the data to the brain.

When light hits the rods and cones, it turns on a protein called “rhinoviolet.” Rhodopsin triggers a cascade of signals that converge on the optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain. The optic nerve is the wire that carries the messages received by the eye and connects directly to the brain.

After the brain receives the light data, it forms a visual image. What you “see” when you open your eyes is your brain’s interpretation of the light entering your eyes. The brain is easiest to understand its surroundings when there is plenty of light. That’s why picking out matching outfits in the dark can be quite difficult.

To see better, your eyes automatically adjust to let in the maximum amount of light, which is why your pupils dilate (get bigger) in the dark. This way, more light can enter the eye and produce the sharpest image in the brain.

So read, work, and play in well-lit areas to give your eyes as much light as they need. This reduces the strain on your eyes, allowing you to see more clearly and comfortably. Night lights can also be installed in hallways so you can safely see your way in the dark.

hearing

The scientific term for hearing is “hearing”. But this hearing shouldn’t make you nervous, hearing is a powerful feeling, one that can bring joy or save you from danger.

When you hear a loved one’s voice, your sense of hearing allows your brain to interpret the other person’s voice as familiar and familiar. The melody of your favorite song is another example of the role of hearing.

Sounds can also alert you to potential danger, bringing to mind car horns, train sirens and smoke alarms. Thanks to hearing, your brain can use these noises to keep you safe.

Your ears gather this sensory information for your brain, and it comes from sound waves (a type of mechanical energy); each set of sound waves is a vibration with a unique frequency. Your ears receive and amplify sound waves, and your brain interprets them as conversation, music, laughter…etc.

Ears come in all shapes and sizes, but they all have similarities. The fleshy part on the outside of the ear is called the pinna, and its purpose is to collect sound waves traveling in your environment and funnel them to the membrane at the end of the ear canal.

This membrane is called the tympanic membrane, or more commonly the eardrum. Sound waves bounce off the eardrum and cause vibrations that travel through the eardrum; these vibrations are amplified by the tiny bones attached to the other side of the eardrum.

After sound waves enter the ear and are amplified by the eardrum, they travel to fluid-filled tubes deep inside the ear. These tubes, called the cochlea, line their surface with tiny hair-like cells that can detect changes in the fluid around them. As sound waves travel through the cochlea, the fluid begins to move.

Fluid flows through the hair cells in the ear to generate nerve impulses, which are then sent to the brain. Remarkably, the sound waves were converted into electrochemical neural signals almost instantaneously. So what started out as a simple vibration turned into a familiar tone, all thanks to hearing.

the sense of smell

The fifth and final sense is that of smell. The sense of smell is very unique, because the sensory organ that detects smell is directly connected to the brain, so the human body has a super powerful sense of smell.

Odors enter your body through your nose, and they come from particles in the air that you capture as you breathe. Inhaling deeply through the nose and moving closer to the source of the smell can enhance the sense of smell.

Inside the nose is a large nerve called the “olfactory bulb,” which runs from the top of the nose and connects directly to the brain. Air molecules inhaled through the nose trigger a neural response in the olfactory bulb, which immediately informs the brain of an odor.

Higher concentrations of odor molecules produce deeper brain stimulation through the olfactory bulbs. This makes the strong smell offensive and disgusting. Lighter scents send milder signals to the brain.

You need your sense of smell for various reasons. Strong, unpleasant smells are a clear warning to the brain that the food you’re about to eat has gone bad. The sweet and pleasant scent relaxes you. Body odors (pheromones) can even help you bond with your loved ones. No matter the smell, your brain and nose work together so you can enjoy the smell.

Combination of different senses to create a stronger feeling

Your brain rarely responds to information from a single sensory sense; your five senses work together to paint a picture of your environment.

You can see this principle in action the next time you go for a walk .

Think about how you feel when you go out and make note of the various sensations you experience. Maybe you see a colorful sunset, or hear the murmur of a stream rushing over rocks, or maybe you touch some fallen leaves. Keeping an eye on the fusion of your senses means you’ll find it hard not to discover something new while walking.

Here are a few recognizable examples of sensory fusion:

smell + taste = taste

Just as a walk outside brings together your senses, so does a good meal . Taste is often used to describe the taste of food, but taste is actually a combination of taste and smell.

The five flavors mentioned earlier do not accurately describe the experience when eating. We have a hard time describing things like mint or pineapple as sweet, salty, sour, bitter or umami. But your brain doesn’t need to interpret flavors from your taste buds alone, your sense of smell can also help, which is called retronasal sense of smell.

When you eat, molecules enter the nasal cavity through the passage between your nose and mouth, where they are detected by the olfactory bulbs and interpreted in the brain. At the same time your taste buds also gather information about taste. The brain compiles this sensory data from the nose and tongue, which is what we call taste.

With the tongue and nose working together, eating mint is not just a bitter taste, it is a cool, refreshing and delicious food; a slice of pineapple is not only sour, its taste is a mixture of fragrant, sweet and sour.

You can see how your sense of smell affects taste through your nose when you eat. If you block this pathway, you’ll notice a dramatic reduction in flavor. Instead, by chewing slowly, you get more flavor out of your food. This allows more aromas to be detected in the nose.

sense and memory

It’s an interesting phenomenon that certain smells can bring about deep memories. The results of the study show that the location of the olfactory bulb in the brain allows some odors to trigger emotional memories.

Because the olfactory bulb is directly connected to the brain in two places: the amygdala and the hippocampus. These two regions are closely linked to emotion and memory. Smell is the only one of the five senses that reaches these two areas, which could explain why smells and fragrances can evoke emotions and memories that sight, hearing, and touch cannot.

What happens when you lose your senses?

Sometimes people experience a weakening or complete loss of sensation. If this affects you, you are not alone, there are many others who are going through the days you are going through.

This includes loss of vision or hearing. Blindness or deafness can start at birth or develop later in life , and it affects everyone differently. The important thing to realize is that even people who are deaf or blind can live full and rich lives.

Usually if one of the five senses is weakened or lost, the other four become stronger to help the brain form a complete picture of the environment. If you are blind or have poor vision, your sense of smell or hearing will become stronger; if you are deaf or hard of hearing, your sense of touch and vision will become more acute.

For those experiencing loss of feeling, there are many great tools available. If you’re feeling weak and need help, talk to someone you trust. Please also be respectful to those who are missing something.

Create healthy habits to support your five senses

These feelings can add color to your life, and it’s important to protect your healthy senses. It’s perfectly normal to feel weaker with age. Still, there are steps you can take to protect your senses and take care of your body.

Here are four important tips:

• Be cautious with hearing. Prolonged exposure to loud, loud noises can damage the sound-producing eardrums in your ears. Always wear earplugs at loud concerts and when operating loud power tools. Listen to music at a lower volume. Take the necessary precautions for a lifetime of good hearing.
• Wear sunglasses to protect your eyes from the sun. You can also help support your vision by eating foods that contain healthy fats, antioxidants (especially lutein and zeaxanthin), and vitamin A.
• Protect your sensitive skin with sunscreen and moisturizer . And drink enough water to avoid dehydration.
• Get into the habit of eating foods rich in vitamins and minerals. Eat whole foods, fruits and lots of vegetables . Nutritional supplements are also an easy and practical way to add to your healthy diet.

You can use your five senses for activities such as gardening, walking and cycling, and enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of your surroundings. Make healthy choices so you can continue to enjoy life with your five senses.