Neuroscientists tackling the age-old question of whether perceptions of color hold from one person to the next are coming up with some interesting answers.
Crisp sounds can trigger ASMR.
YuliaLisitsa/ Shutterstock
Brains recognize a smell based on which cells fire, in what order – the same way you recognize a song based on its pattern of notes. How much can you change the ‘tune’ and still know the smell?
Don’t worry that your dog’s world is visually drab.
Kevin Short/EyeEm via Getty Images
Imagine being able to detect a smell from more than a kilometre away. Dogs can sniff out things from a greater distance than that.
A health worker carries out an olfactory test to monitor smell loss to a resident 65 km from Buenos Aires city, on May 24, 2020, amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
ALEJANDRO PAGNI/AFP via Getty Images
Many respiratory viruses cause us to temporarily lose our sense of smell. But SARS-CoV-2 isn’t like those other viruses. Researchers are now exploring how it differs and whether patients recover.
Cookies taste so good. Smell tells us that before we even take a bite. How?
Jennifer Pallian/Unsplash
Rakaia Kenney, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Kayla Lemons, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Weihong Lin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Mmmmmmm. That smells delicious. Wait, how do you know that?
We touch, therefore we know.
Jupiterimages/Getty Images
With dreaded, invisible germs lurking on surfaces and in people, our surroundings are seen as a minefield – and we end up dulling one of our most valuable senses.
Patients who later test positive for COVID-19 are reporting early loss of smell and taste. Researchers are now trying to understand if this could be an early sign of the disease.
Different MR images help us unravel the mysteries of the brain. A diffusion MRI tractography reconstruction like this reveals the complicated wiring deep within a person’s brain.
Thijs Dhollander
Brain functions integrate and compress multiple components of an experience, including sight and smell – which simply can’t be handled in the way computers sense, process and store data.
Museums are starting to present visual art in multisensory ways that audiences can touch and feel.
Richard Harlow of Blind Eye Works
Designating an object with the movement of a finger is at the heart of human communication, yet precisely why we point isn’t clearly understood. A new paper indicates that it may be related to touch.
Eyes surprise: fossil eyes from a 54 million year old cranefly.
Lindgren et al./Nature
Our sense of touch lets us know how hard or soft something is, how solid or pliable it is to handle. That’s an important skill if you want robots to handle things safely.