Sensing the World Around You
Your senses are how you take in information about the world. The traditional five are sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — though humans actually have several more.
Questions you may have include:
- What are the senses?
- How do they work?
- Are there really only five?
The classic five senses
Sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are the senses we name most often. Each gathers a different kind of information — light, sound, airborne chemicals, dissolved chemicals, and physical contact.
How senses work
Each sense relies on specialized receptors that detect a particular kind of stimulus and convert it into nerve signals. Those signals travel to the brain, which interprets them into the experience of seeing, hearing, and so on. What we perceive is the brain’s interpretation, not the raw stimulus itself.
More than five
Humans also sense balance, the position of the body (proprioception), temperature, and pain, among others. So the familiar “five senses” is a simplification of a richer system.
Summary
The senses gather information through specialized receptors that send signals the brain interprets. The classic five — sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — are joined by others such as balance, body position, temperature, and pain, giving us our picture of the world.