A person can have up to 33 senses

Most of our experience is multisensory. We don’t perceive sight, sound, or touch separately—they always work together. The smell of shampoo can change the feeling of hair texture, and the scent of roses can make them more silky. Even the taste of food is shaped not only by the tongue, but also by the nose, touch, and consistency of food.

Scientists note that for a long time, some feelings simply did not stand out separately. For example, proprioception allows us to sense the position of the body and limbs without visual control. Interoception is responsible for the perception of internal processes — hunger, palpitations, fatigue. There is also a sense of balance associated with the work of the vestibular apparatus, as well as a sense of body ownership, which can be disrupted after a stroke when a person ceases to feel his hand as his own.

Even habitual feelings actually consist of several systems. The sense of touch includes pain, temperature, itching, and pressure. Taste is a combination of the work of taste buds, sense of smell and tactile sensations in the mouth. It is the smells that form the main part of what we call taste, so, for example, the aroma of strawberries is felt not by the tongue, but through the nasal passages during a meal.

Research shows that the senses constantly influence each other. Noise in an airplane reduces sensitivity to sweet and salty foods, but does not affect the taste of umami (a special sixth taste according to the Japanese), so tomato juice seems especially saturated on board. Changing the sound of footsteps can cause a feeling that the body has become lighter or heavier, and voice accompaniment in museums helps to better remember the visual details of paintings.

Interdisciplinary teams of philosophers, neuroscientists, and psychologists deal with such issues. Understanding how feelings work is important not only for science, but also for medicine, rehabilitation, and psychology. Studying sensory systems helps us better understand how our perception of the world and our own body is shaped.

According to the researchers, everyday life is full of examples of how complex and interconnected our feelings are. It’s enough to pause briefly to notice how sight, hearing, smells, touches, and inner sensations work together to create a unified experience of reality.