We don't even know that there are at least nine senses in our body.
Vision, smell, hearing, touch and taste. These are the generally accepted five feelings that most people have. Without them, we would have no music, no painting, no culinary delights. But if you discard the classic "five", you can find that it is not all our feelings. There are many other senses in the human body that constantly inform us about the condition inside and outside our body. They report starvation or carbon dioxide detection and tell us where our hands and feet are. They won't help us see the sunset, smell roses or enjoy listening to our favorite songs. But without this set of basic feelings working, so to speak, in the background, we probably wouldn't even have survived.
If you reach for scratch your head, pull your ear or touch your nose, you'll probably hit the target without even looking at it. This is all thanks to proprioception,which tells us exactly where in space our limbs are and how to control them without looking at them. It is this feeling that allows us to walk with our heads up, hit the ball, looking at the gate, and control the steering wheel, looking at the road.
But where does this feeling come from? It's all about tiny receptors called pro-prior receptors that are in our joints, muscles and tendons. They determine how much stress and strain our limbs are experiencing, and they constantly send that information to our brains. Based on this statistic, our brains can distinguish where our limbs are relative to the environment and the rest of the body.
Proprioception is not the only feeling that helps us move around. The other key player here is our sense of balance or balance. It allows us to stand, walk and move without tipping over.
Our sense of balance depends on (the inner ear). In the inner ear, fluid flows move between three winding channels. When we move our head up and down or turn it left or right, this liquid flows into one of three channels, each of which determines the direction. This fluid helps the brain calculate the position, orientation and movement of your head. Along with data from visual and proprioceptive systems, the brain uses this information to send messages to our muscles, telling them how to stay upright and distribute our weight evenly.
An illustration showing the inner ear and vestibular system, including the anterior, side and posterior fluid ducts, which help us maintain balance.
We also have internal senses that report the condition of the body. One example is our sense of hunger.
The longer we go without food, the more ghrelin levels rise. However, as soon as we eat a delicious meal, this level drops again, and hormones such as insulin and leptincome into play, telling us that we have already eaten enough.
Other feelings tell us when the body has too high or low concentration of certain substances. A good example of this is our internal carbon dioxide detector.
We get rid of CO2 by exhaling it, so things like excessive breathing during exercise can cause carbon dioxide levels to fall too low. When this happens, we get dizzy, we get confused and start experiencing a rapid heartbeat. Conversely, during panic attacks, when we find it difficult to breathe, there is a sharp jump in CO2 levels. In this case, we begin to feel drowsy, disorientated and often experience headaches.
If you're having a headache, try just breathing
In both of these scenarios, special cells called chemoreceptorsdetect and respond to high and low levels of chemicals in the blood, then send signals to the brain. They tell our body to either strengthen breathing and get rid of excess CO2, or slow it down so as not to lose too much carbon dioxide.
Although hunger and balance are undeniable components of our body, there is another feeling that is much more debated. Some researchers believe that people can also feel magnetic fields.
For years, scientists have believed that magnetic reception, the ability to detect magnetic fields, exists only in migratory birds, fish and some other animals. However, in March 2019, a team of researchers published .
In their study, they placed the participants in a cell surrounded by smallmagnetic field. They then watched using the EEG to see how their brains would react.
This means that our brain somehow reacts to magnetic fields, but what exactly that means is unclear. Do you feel the magnetic field changes? Tell us in the comments or . While researchers believe this is the first step to detecting magnetic reception in humans, others are unsure. And since this study came out relatively recently, no one has yet had a chance to replicate its results.
In the meantime, we can find time to appreciate all our well-known feelings, not just the five most famous. Because if they all didn't work together, we might not be so happy, healthy and, most importantly, the living people we are today.
