For some reason, I’ve always had a minor interest in what senses people have, probably stemming from a particular game I played. The most commonly thrown around number is five, but I’ve heard one book claim twelve, and another claim nineteen! In scientific circles, is there any agreement on how many senses humans have, or is it just a matter of the author’s opinion.
Thank you!
Oliver Sacks says seven.
The two in addition to the generally known five are the sense of balance in the inner ear and a general sense of where your body is in relation to itself. He describes two people in his books each who lost one of those senses.
If there are any more I don’t have 'em.
There are all sorts of minor senses: Acid sensors in the stomach, body temperature sensors in the brain, blood sugar sensors, pH/CO[sub]2[/sub]/Oxygen sensors, etc.
With all due respect to the good Dr. Sacks, generally the two phenomena he describes are lumped together as the sense of proprioception. It truly does qualify as a sixth sense, but a completely natural (if more subtle) one.
Alright, for the curious, here’s a list of the nineteen senses I mentioned, taken from Integrated Thematic Instruction, third edition, by Susan Kovalik and Karen Olsen.
Sense (Kind of Input)
Sight (Visible Light)
Hearing (Vibrations in Air)
Touch (Tactile Contact)
Taste (chemical Molecular)
Smell (Olfactory Molecular)
Balance (Kinesthetic Geotropic)
Vestibular (repetitious Movement)
Temperature (Molecular Movement)
Pain (Nociception)
Eidetic Imagery (Neuroelectrical Image Retention)
Magnetic (Ferromagnetic Orientation)
Infared (Long Electromagnetic Waves)
Ultraviolet (Short Electromagnetic Waves)
Ionic (Airborne Ionic Charge)
Vomeronasal (Pheromonic Sensing)
Proximal (Physical Closeness)
Electrical (Surface Charge)
Barometric (Atmospheric Pressure)
Geogravimetric (Sensing Mass Differences)
Could someone help me decipher the legitmacy of these, and in some cases, what the heck they are? Thanks!
Maybe the book itself has explanations. I’ve never read it.
Seems a little hokey to me. Here’s my opinions on some of them.
That’s something I was confused about. CAN we sense infared or ultraviolet?
Qadgop:
Sacks referred to the sense I lamely described as “a general sense of where your body is in relation to itself” as proprioception. The sense of balance coming from the inner ear he described as something separate, and wrote two stories of two people who lost one of these two but not both (or any other senses).
If Im not mistaken (and I may be) the stories are in “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat”.
The man who lost his sense of balance cleverly made a carpenter’s level attachment to his glasses which he could see out of the corner of his eyes.
The woman who lost her proprioception was a sad case. She lost it mysteriously as a reaction to pre-op medication. There was little she could do. She had to relearn how to speak clearly and had to keep a constant eye on her body lest her arms wander about.
What sticks in my mind is her description of riding in a convertible: only with strong wind on her body could she sense herself to some degree and catch a glimpse of what life was like before she lost her proprioception.
RK
Does one of these cover the sense that my bladder is full?
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How does one lose their proprioception?
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How many senses humans have is a matter of how they are counted. For instance, you could count taste as one sense or as five, one each for the five different kinds of taste sensors on the tongue. Similarly with the four different touch sensors and either two or four different kinds of light sensors.
But apply this kind of reasoning to smell and you get several thousand.
regnad, Dr. Sacks is probably technically correct to divide proprioception from the balance sense generated in the labyrinths, but the two are rather intertwined, and for practical purposes of every day conversation, can probably be treated as one.
dtilque, your point has some validity, but those which you describe are just subsets of a particular sense. Proprioception is distinct from the other 5 senses.
True. But some of those people who count 12 or 19 or whatever are counting that way. They tend to lump all the smell sensors into one sense, though.
Some of the senses listed by Netbrian can be found in certain animals. Some birds and insects can see in UV, although this is also a subset of vision. They have cones with pigments that respond to UV wavelengths. And lenses that are not opaque at those wavelengths (we could see a bit into the UV if our lenses weren’t opaque there since our blue cones do respond to the near UV).
Rattle snakes can detect IR with organs other than their eyes so that would be a different sense. Sharks and eels can detect electrical fields. Some migratory birds and insects have internal compasses that respond to the Earth’s magnetic field.