The Five Senses
Who would have thought that these five body parts are beyond normal? I mean, they do perform their tasks--tasting, hearing, seeing, feeling, and smelling--but the way they interact with our environment, and the way the signals that they pick-up influence our behavior is just a little different than I expected.
Taste
When we were young, we tend to prefer sweet tasting foods over the bitter ones. Why? Simply because of safety and survival. No, we don't really know that it's safer to eat sweets when we were babies. It's the fact that poisonous substances, and other stuff we're not supposed to eat usually taste bitter. When we were young, though we did not really know anything about food yet, our keen sense for survival has already told us or perhaps imprinted in our minds that things that taste bitter should be classified under poisonous substances, and should be avoided. However, as time passes by, we grow up and gain experience points in the game called life, we somehow change our food preferences. Either we eat more, and like more or the other way around (how sad. :)) ).
Food preferences differ , just like how experiences would from one person to another. One of the things that could affect our preferences are bad experiences. As for me, I have my own share of bad experiences with food.
I don't eat shawarma. Some people might love it, but even the smell makes me cringe, and the thought makes my mouth water (not because I want to eat it but because I want to barf). I remember tasting it for the first time, and it tasted so bad I swore I'm never going near any shawarma ever again.
Anyway, back to where I was. Aside from bad experiences, food preference could also be cultural. Filipinos, I know, could attest to this. Who enjoys balut more than we do? As for other countries, they also have their own exotic foods that maybe the people who would enjoy it would only come from their place.
Smell
They say that ninety percent of what we taste is just the scent of the food. That's why when our noses our clogged, we could not really taste what we're eating. So maybe we can conclude that smell affects the food preference of a person. Aside from food preference, we also have a preference for the things we like smelling and the things we do not like, and just like the food preferences, we develop our inclination towards certain scents through life experience points (hehe).
We might prefer a certain scent of perfume because it makes us feel safe, or comfortable, or fresh. Sometimes, we also love the scent of things that remind us of good memories with the people we love. And of course, if there are scents that we love, there are also those that we do not want to smell. I really do not need to mention examples of these things because mentioning them here feels gross.
Hearing
Ever wondered why sad movies use melancholic background music, and suspense or action movies use fast paced songs? Simple. Because sounds actually affect the emotions of the people watching the movie. If the background music is slow and dramatic, anyone who's into tearjerker films would cry even before the heartbreaking line is delivered. If you do not believe me, try using Chopin's The Entertainer as a background for a sad movie scene.
Aside from movies, one can also see the effect of sound to a person's emotion when he is listening to his favorite song. Favorite songs actually trigger pleasure sensors in the brain, which make us feel elated or even euphoric when we listen to the songs we really love. Another thing affected by music is our emotions and dreams while sleeping.
In the short film about hearing, an experiment was shown wherein a girl volunteered to sleep and have her reactions to different sounds recorded. As soon as she had fallen into a deep sleep, and was dreaming (having REMs), different sounds were played; loud enough to be heard, but soft enough to not wake her up. When she was interviewed about it, she said that she dreamt of being in a dock when soft music was played, and dreamt of being trapped in a fire when the loud and noisy sounds were played.
Aside from the emotions, it has also been found out that fast music makes the heart beat faster, and manages to put the brain into a hyperactive mode because of certain parts in the brain that are triggered by these fast paced sounds.
Sight
We see what we only want to see. People might say I was wrong for saying that, but indeed, it is true. We may not be the ones deciding what we want to see, but still, there are some things right under our noses that we could not even sense. This is not because we choose not to but because our sense of sight is focused on something else.
When our eyes are set to focus on something, whether an object, or a person, we tend to ignore the small changes happening in our surroundings. This is because the brain wants us to focus only one thing, one moment at a time. When this happens, it would be hard for us to notice small changes.
Aside from that, the eyes help us balance. When balancing on one foot, a person would find it easier to balance with his eys open. This is because he is able to see how the room swings, and could change his position to prevent swinging of the room. So when the eyes are closed, expect a greater possibility of falling out of balance.
Touch
In the short films that we saw, the most vivid memory that I have of the Sense of Touch part is the experiement where people were given "pills" that would either alleviate the pain they would feel from the electric shock or make it worse. Of course the pills were only colored dough made to look like pills. What's fascinating was that all the volunteers were shocked with the same level of current but they had different responses. Those given with the reliever did not feel much pain, while those given with "pills" that would make the pain worse looked like they really felt painful.
The idea behind it was that people could change the way they react and feel even without thinking about it. External stimulus such as saying if something's going to hurt really affects the way we feel pain.
***Asde from the five senses, animal behavior was also discussed. These are instinctive and learned behavior.
Instinctive behavior is, of course, based on instincts. Animals were not expected to be taught how to behave and only act to survive. This is very different form learned behavior. As the name implies, learned behavior are those taught to animals either by humans, or by experiences. These learned behaviors often come from the animals' exposure to their environment, while instinctive behaviors are known to have developed from the behavior imprinted on one's genes.
**Image is from http://felix.goldencartoons.com
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