Humans have five basic senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. The brain gets information from the senses to help it understand and perceive the world around us. There are other human senses as well as the basic five that you cannot live without. Balance and spatial awareness are lesser-known senses. The human senses work.

According to the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, touch is the first sense that humans develop. Touch is a communication between the brain and the skin. Pressure, temperature, light touch, vibration, pain, and other sensations are all part of the touch sense and are all attributed to different receptors in the skin.

Touch seems to be very important to a human's well-being, as it isn't just a sense used to interact with the world. According to a study published by the University of California, Berkeley, touch has been found to convey compassion from one human to another.

Humans can make decisions that are influenced by touch. According to six studies published in the June 24, 2010, issue of the journal Science, touching something with a texture can affect a person's decisions.

Joshua Ackerman is an assistant professor of marketing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Cornea

The outer lens of the eye, called the cornea, is dome shaped. (Image credit: Getty Images)

It is a complex process to see things through the eyes. Light reflects off an object. The light that passes through the hole of the eye is bends by the transparent outer layer of the eye. The colored part of the eye, called the iris, is like a shutter of a camera, which can be opened or closed to let in more light.

Most of the light is focused on the cornea. The light passes through the lens, which focuses the light, according to Dr. Mark Fromer.

The lens of the eye bends the light and focuses it on the retina, which is full of nerve cells. According to the American Optometric Association, these cells are named for their shapes. Cones are used to translate light into colors. Light is translated into motion by the rods. Humans can see when there is limited light. The light is translated into electrical impulses that are sent to the brain.

According to a study published in the journal PLOS One, people without sight may be able to compensate with enhanced hearing, taste, touch and smell. Those born with sight may have better memory and language skills.

In the case of being profoundly blind, the brain learns to use information at its disposal so that it can interact with the environment in a more effective manner.

Hearing

The human ear is a complex labyrinth. The sound travels through the ear and into the canal. Sound waves reach the eardrum. This is a thin sheet of tissue that vibrates when sound waves hit it.

The sound travels to the middle ear. There are three tiny bones called the malleus, incus and stapes that vibrate. According to the National Library of Medicine, the stapes bone pushes a structure called the oval window in and out, which causes the organ of Corti to vibrate. The spiral organ is used for hearing. The hair cells in the organ translate the sound into electrical impulses. The impulses travel to the brain through sensory nerves.

People retain their sense of balance because the Eustachian tube in the middle ear equalizes the air pressure in the middle ear with the air pressure in the atmosphere. The inner ear contains the vestibular complex, which regulates a sense of equilibrium. The vestibulocochlear nerve carries sound and equilibrium information to the brain.

Have you ever listened to a recording of your voice and thought it wasn't yours? Some of the qualities of your voice sound different to those around you. The sound of your voice will be detected by the person next to you. The same will happen in your ears, but as the speech is being produced from within you, it will also reach your eardrums via another route.

When you make noise with your vocal cords, the sound travels up through your skull to your ears. Waves stretch out more as they move through the bone.

The pitch was lower in the lower part. The outcome is a voice with a slightly different tone to what others hear.

Smell

According to the National Institute of Health, humans may be able to smell over 1 trillion scents. The olfactory cleft is located on the roof of the nose, next to the olfactory bulb and fossa. The cleft has nerve endings that transmit smells to the brain.

Humans are just as good as dogs at smelling things, according to research. According to research published in the May 11, 2017, issue of the journal Science, humans can discriminate between 1 trillion different odors.

Smell

Humans have 400 smelling receptors. (Image credit: Getty Images)

The author of the new review said that the sense of smell is just as good in humans as it is in other mammals. The Rockefeller University study was published in the March issue of the journal Science.

According to the Monell Chemical Senses Center, humans have 400 smellingreceptors. McGann said that the human brain is more complicated than that of animals that are super smellers.

Poor smelling ability may be a symptom of a medical condition. According to the journal Schizophrenia Research, the distorted or decreased ability to smell is a symptom of schizophrenia and depression.

Old age can make it harder to smell. According to a 2006 paper published by the National Institutes of Health, more than 75% of people over the age of 80 years may have major olfactory impairment.

Taste

The perception of four different tastes is broken down by the gustatory sense. A fifth taste is defined as umami. There may be more than one flavor that has not yet been discovered. It's not a taste. According to the National Library of Medicine, it is a pain signal.

According to the NLM, the sense of taste aided in human evolution. A bitter or sour taste indicates that a plant is rotten or poisonous. The food was often rich in vitamins and minerals.

The taste buds have a smell. Adults have taste buds. Most of them are on the tongue, but they also line the back of the throat, the epiglottis, the nose and the esophagus. The sensory cells on the buds are shaped like oranges or flower buds. The capsule's tips have small taste hairs. Chemicals are bound to the cells by the hairs.

Taste buds

This magnified image shows oval-shaped taste buds on the tongue. (Image credit: Getty Images)

The tongue has different zones for different flavors, according to the myth. The sides of the tongue are more sensitive to the tastes than the middle. Some of the basic tastes are reacted to by half of the taste buds. The cells have different levels of sensitivity.

Some cells may be more sensitive to sweet, followed by bitter, sour and salty, while others have their own rankings. All of the information from the different parts of the tongue is combined to produce the full experience of a flavor.

Only half of the sensory cells are able to respond to more than one taste. Their job is to tell people how salty or sweet something tastes.

The perception of taste in the brain is helped by other factors. According to the journal Flavour, the smell of the food greatly affects how the brain perceives the taste. In the olfactory referral process, smells are sent to the mouth. A person with a stuffy nose may have trouble tasting food. The sense of touch contributes to taste.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, a burnt tongue is a first-degree burn and heals in a few days. When exposed to hot food, taste buds don't completely die.

The upper layers of our taste buds are removed when we scold the surface of our tongues. Basal cells are found within the bundle of flavour- detecting cells. Typically replacing the gustatory cells every ten days or so, these regenerating cells quickly become replacement cells, restoring your taste. 10 percent of cells are new to taste buds each day according to the journal Archives Italiennes de Biologie.

The sense of space

Proprioception test

A patient may be asked to touch their nose, then the examiner's finger as part of a proprioception test. (Image credit: Getty Images)

There is another sense that deals with how your brain understands where you are in space, in addition to the traditional big five. The sense is called proprioception.

Our limbs and muscles have proprioception. Persimony allows a person to touch their finger to the tip of their nose even if their eyes are closed. A person can climb steps without looking at them. People with poor proprioception may be clumsy.

The ability to sense force, such as feeling when someone presses down on your skin, may be passed down through the genes of people who have poor proprioception. The September 2016 study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that the patient's version of the PIEZO2 may not work.

Additional senses & variations

Most people don't really see the subtle senses. There are neuron sensors that sense movement to control balance. People can keep track of their limbs with the help of specific kinesthetic receptors. Oxygen is detected in certain arteries of the bloodstream.

People don't perceive senses the same way. People with synesthesia can see sounds as colors.

Additional resources

The look and smell of food influences taste according to an article by Scientific American. You can watch a video about how we see.

Bibliography

Touch the screen. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy was published by the university.

There are resources for teachers. The American Optometric Association has a website.

Structural and functional changes in early blindness are revealed by multimodal MR-imaging. The article is titled "plosone" and can be found in the journal.

In blind people, the brain rewires itself to enhance other senses. The Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary has a news release.

Hearing and the cochlea. National Library of Medicine.

Balance and otitis media with effusion. The International Journal of Audiology was published in 2008.

Humans can identify more than 1 trillion smells. National Institutes of Health.

Poor human olfaction is a 19th-century myth. Science was published on the website of the science organization.

Effects of aging on smell and taste. The Postgraduate Medical Journal was published in 2006

Just how much of what we like derives from our sense of smell? There is an article titled " Flavour" in the Flavour Journal.

Search for taste progenitor cells and taste bud regeneration. The Italiennes de Biologie was published in 2010.