Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with senses

Help me be more sensuous.

Pineapplicious — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:28:33 -0800

What suggestions do you have to help me be more sensuous? My sense perceptions are less refined than I would like. Some things I'd like to be able to do are to identify specific ingredients in the foods I am eating through taste, to distinguish one instrument from another in the music I am listening to, to judge distance more accurately by sight. As it is now, my perceptions are blunt. I taste food enough to know if I like it or not and can identify spiceness and can identify an overwhelming ingredient, but anything more subtle is lost on me. The same is true in music, distance, etc. I should mention that this lack of refinement is not due to a lack of experience nor any disfunction of my sense organs. What suggestions do you have?

Low threshold for noise

neworder7 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:33:43 -0800

I have very low threshold for certain sounds. I can't handle noise, especially I find high pitch female or children voice unbearable. I also have trouble with neighbors walking around, the high bass thuds etc. I am 35, male.I have always had this problem even as a kid or teenager. I cannot stand people eating or chewing noisy. I have left restaurants for that reason.

I can't stand hearing chatter coming from the distance.

I can't seem to focus at work (cubicle farm) or never feel relaxed at home.

However I don't have any problem listening to music loud, or traffic, or animals, or nature.

I have a history of OCD / depression/ anxiety, tendency to get obsessed. I know you are not my doctor, but where do you think I should seek for the solution?

Is this a psychological problem or is it there a physiological condition in which a persons senses are just too acute/sensitive? I am asking this because under fluorescent light my face and eyes turn red too.

Anosmic reversal--can you smell again?

emhutchinson — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:33:16 -0800

Are you or your child anosmic? As in can't smell anything? Have you found a way to reverse your condition? My son can't smell anything. He is now ten and can't remember ever smelling. It doesn't bother him, but it does affect his eating habits. Fruits and vegetables "taste like cardboard," with the exception of Granny Smith apples and broccoli (anosmic faves). His condition is not genetic, it is apocryphal. Is there anyone out there who has grown up this way and seen a reversal?

New York Subway Fiction Suggestions

billtron — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:15:44 -0800

LiteratureFilter: Yo metafilterland. I'm on a quest for two things: literary representations of the new york city subway, the more personal and sensorial the better, and literary representations of a new york city without subways, circa before 1904. Non-fiction and suggestions are welcome as well, as are examples that use less stringent definitions of "text" (film, song lyrics, dance etc).

Can you show me some amazing literary descriptions of the pleasures of tasting food?

laumry — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 10:44:57 -0800

Can you show me some amazing literary descriptions of the pleasures of tasting and eating food? Hi all, happy new year!

I'd like to host a dinner party as a January blues-buster. I'm toying with different forms of invitation. One idea is to pirate any amazing descriptions I can find of *how* it feels to taste and eat good food. I'd like the descriptions to be vivid, feelgood and, perhaps, literary. Does anyone have any suggestions?

NB - I'm not really interested in descriptions of outlandish food, per se. I'm only really interested in descriptions of the sensation of tasting, eating and quaffing (potentially outlandish) food and drink. Bonus marks for descriptions that hit the other senses, too!

Alien senses

showbiz_liz — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:34:10 -0800

I'm trying to put together a list of senses other than the big human five... I want to explore the idea (in writing) of an alien species which has none of the typical 'five senses', and instead has a totally different set. I'm looking for weird senses in every kind of organism, and also, if possible, other human senses besides the main five (which I believe I remember reading about at some point).

Why does the air always feel thick to me?

dowcrag — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:12:13 -0800

The air feels thick to me, like it's more substantial than it really is. When I move, especially my head and arms, it feels like I'm leaving behind me a trail that's like a hollowed-out cavity of where that limb has just been. Felt like this since I was a child. So. WTF? So when you move, you feel the air on your limbs. So far so normal. But for me, it's always felt thicker than that, like something solid, but barely there. As I've said, I get a strong sensation that I'm leaving a cavity trail behind me, and especially my limbs, as I move. What's more, different directions of movement create a different sensation. If I move my head forwards, or my arms outwards so that the backs of my hands are the leading side, I get one sort of sensation that I could describe as 'warm', 'smooth' or 'with the grain'. If the movement is with my open palms leading, or I move my head or body forward, I get a sensation that's more like 'cool' or 'against the grain'. It's sort of like stroking velvet - one way's smooth, the other's got a sort of soft friction to it.

This is an incredibly powerful sensation to me and generally there all the time.

Never discussed this with anyone, but I just got a big blast of the sensation whilst answering another question, so I just thought what the hell.

Any ideas? Remnant of an active childhood imagination? Arm hairs? Proprioception? To my knowledge I'm otherwise pretty sane and normal.

Why, when I get tired, do my senses sometimes go into super-human overdrive?

dunstanorchard — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:45:34 -0800

I'm wondering if anyone has had similar experiences to those described below, and/or can enlighten me as to what's happening. Occasionally, when I get very tired and am doing something quiet, like reading in bed, or working on the computer, my senses kind of go into overdrive.

My hearing becomes so acute that I can "hear" silence, hear the air move. My breathing sounds monstrous and incredibly detailed, and turning of a book's page lets me hear every fiber of the paper bend and rustle.

My touch and sight go crazy too, with everything becoming super "real". The act of pressing a key on my laptop stops being a quick, fleeting sense of pressure, and instead becomes quite a rich, drawn-out, multi-touch, multi-pressure experience.

And while these experiences seem to slow down in my brain, they're not slowing down my actions. And it's not a panic-inducing experience either.

The only thing I can liken it to is what I've read about top athletes going into the zone, and having everything become slow and intense for them while the world carries on as normal around them.

So, would anyone have any what's happening to me, and does this happen to anyone else?

I am not on drugs :o)
I am perfectly healthy in every other way, except I don't have (and have never had) a sense of smell.

What else can be sensed passively?

viewofdelft — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:13:28 -0800

What else can be sensed passively? Help me construct a list of things that can be sensed passively by machines. I came up with a list of the more obvious subjects of passive sensing, including:

smell
touch
taste
sound
location
motion
pressure (e.g. of the air and blood)
temperature
levels of certain gases (e.g. CO2 levels)
humidity
seismic activity
electromagnetic radiation (e.g. just about everything else I could imagine)

Help me fill in the obvious while also providing the more obscure, such as wireless networks (which, admittedly, may be categorized as electromagnetic radiation). What other things can be sensed passively by machines?

Memories Triggered by Smells

peacay — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 10:02:56 -0800

For a lot of people, a particular aroma can be a strong trigger for memory. I don't think it works in reverse: why is this? If I get even the faintest whisps of aroma from a certain musk joss stick [incense], I am immediately transported back to the streets of Bangalore and Hyderabad which I visited many years ago. This can be as mild as a passing thought of 'India' in general or if I stop and concentrate, it can be vivid remembered scenes and colours and peoples' faces - you know, strongly evocative.

But in the absence of some aroma trigger, if I think about India (and I just use this as an example), even if I concentrate to try and remember events or people or places, I may get passing 'visions' or thought rememberances perhaps, but they never involve actually experiencing the same smells. In other words, smells don't seem to be able to be evoked but are themselves strongly evocative.

Is this just me? Do some people experience aromas when they think about specific people/places from their past? Are there all different grades of aroma-memory-responses? What's the interplay going on here? Is the sense of smell different in this respect to our other senses? Why? And I guess, arising from this, why can the smells make me remember things more vividly than my non-aroma mediated powers of concentration?

Could balance be considered a sixth sense?

bd — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:25:22 -0800

Could balance be considered a sixth sense? A friend and I recently got into an argument regaring balance and whether or not it could be considered as a sixth sense.

I need some academic writings that back up the idea of balance as a sixth sense. The paper could also include other senses as well.

He just doesn't seem to believe me no matter what points I give him. Even when I give him examples such as, how do you walk without seeing, he still stand behind the idea that he could walk without balance, something which I know is completely untrue.

I need some good proof so go at it!

Can a noise provoke disgust?

randomination — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:34:28 -0800

Is there a sonic equivalent to goatse? It seems to me people can feel visceral disgust through sight, smell/taste or touch, but not sound. Is there a noise that humans find universally disgusting or shocking, like G-boy? (Not just irritating, like a pneumatic drill or James Blunt.)

If so, I promise not to play it down the phone to the next telemarketer. (Much.)

Electricity down my back: "Is this entirely mental"

jheiz — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 08:29:47 -0800

When I'm lying in bed sometimes I can concentrate and send what feels like a charge of electricity down my spine. Am I actually doing anything or is this entirely mental? My back will physically move a bit as I do it and it feels quite nice, but is it just some sort of illusion?

Suddenly, everything tastes sweet.

calistasm — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 19:05:50 -0800

MysteriousTasteBudChange!Filter: Everything I drink tastes sweet to me now. Even water and salty broth. Strangely enough, I can still taste salt in food, and a pinch of salt on the tongue tastes exactly as it should. What the hell is going on? Am I going to die of a brain tumor or something?

Blood in the Water

Coffeemate — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 20:10:31 -0800

So sharks can smell one part blood in one million parts seawater. How? I understand that the blood would diffuse in water, but wouldn't at least a particle of the blood have to come into contact with the shark? Does diffusion happen that fast?

Tell me about your best trip!

Gyan — Tue, 06 Jul 2004 06:53:58 -0800

Hopefully, the following question's not too taboo. My friend was reminiscing about trippin' and the activities during. What tripping activities do y'all remember that were phenomenally wonderful? How did you delight those senses?

What do you know about saffron?

riffola — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 13:54:40 -0800

What does saffron taste like? Also what are the differences between Greek, Indian, Iranian and Spanish saffron? Also which is the best? I've grown up in Mumbai, my mum's a great cook, so I've had saffron in my meals and Indian sweets and even the mandatory saffron and almond milk during winters. I know we usually use Spanish Mancha Saffron. I am very familiar with saffron, I just don't know to describe the taste.