Tag: senses
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A Look at our Sense of Touch
Primal, Acute and Easily Duped: Our Sense of Touch is a recent article from Pulitzer Prize-winning Natalie Angier (author of The Canon: The Beautiful Basics of Science) taking a rudimentary look at the sense of touch and some recent research in the field of haptics. Scientists have determined that the human finger is so sensitive…
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The Power of Your Smallest Finger
I completely forgot about this article on the astonishing power of your little finger until David’s post reminded me of its existence (and the most surprising fact therein). So what would you lose if you didn’t have one? “You’d lose 50 percent of your hand strength, easily…” via Seed
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A Short History of Fingerprints
Cabinet of Wonders provides us with everything you’ve ever wanted to know about fingerprints, but were afraid to ask. I particularly enjoyed this tidbit: Spider monkeys, whose prehensile tail-tips are so sensitive and flexible that they can pick a dime up off a floor, also have prints on the bare spot at the end of…
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Losing Your Sense of Balance
After a hysterectomy, Cheryl contracted a post-operative infection and was given the antibiotic gentamicin; a known side effect of which is a loss of the sense of balance (equilibrioception). When it was overprescribed to her the inevitable happened. The Telegraph follows Cheryl’s story on losing her sense of balance and enlightens us on neuroplasticity in…
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Losing Your Sense of Smell
Three years ago Elizabeth Zierah caught a cold; a few weeks later she was back to normal… except that she had lost her sense of smell. In Slate, she writes about the miseries of losing the sense of smell (and in the process, taste). I lost normal function on the left side of my body…
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Umami: The Fifth Taste
Sweet, bitter, sour, salt… and umami. The fifth taste. Psychophysicists have long suggested the existence of four taste ‘primaries’, referred to as the basic tastes. Umami is now accepted as the fifth basic taste, exemplified by the non-salty sensations evoked by some free amino acids such as monosodium glutamate. Umami is a Japanese word meaning…