Mysterious Sensations
Our senses help us navigate the world and experience "reality." They bring us pleasure (tender touches); alert us to dangers (screeching tires); and enable us to make distinctions (light from dark). They also can be puzzling at times--creating sensations, for instance, in body parts that don't exist.
Below are several images from PHENOMENA. Take a look and see if you can uncover a few secrets of the senses!
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| Our sense of smell not only brings us pleasure, it's closely linked with our emotions and memories. | Esref Armagan, a blind artist from Turkey, paints images with the depth and perspective of a sighted person. To understand how he's able to do this, scientists are studying Esref and the workings of his brain. | |
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| Our brains automatically look to make connections, especially when we notice a coincidence. Some of our greatest discoveries--such as the discovery of Halley's Comet--happen when people take note of coincidences and validate their theories with science. | Animals live in different sensory worlds than people. Bees, for example, can see light in the ultraviolet range, and humans cannot. | |
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| If you want to learn more about a person, spend fifteen minutes in his or her bedroom when they're not around, says psychologist Sam Gosling. What's this room saying? | Peter Meijer's vOICe (Oh I See!) technology helps blind people "see" with sound. The vOICe converts video images it receives from a camera into highly complex sound patterns called soundscapes. Pictured above is a visual computer reconstruction of one second of audible sound, as generated by the vOICe. |
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