BBC随身英语｜人类可能拥有33种感官吗？
英音听力｜BBC & 经济学人等
Could humans have 33 senses?
Many of us grew up learning that humans have five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch – an idea dating back to the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. But what if this list is incomplete?
A sense is anything that can give your body information about the outside world, and some of these don't neatly fit into the traditional five. Modern scientists estimate there may be up to 33 different senses.
One sense that doesn't fit into one of the five boxes is proprioception. This is the sense of where your body parts are in space. Thanks to this sense, you can touch your nose with your eyes closed and walk around in the dark – you know where your legs are without looking.
Then there's interoception which helps you sense things inside your body, like hunger and an increased heart rate. And don't take your sense of balance for granted. Balance relies on fluid in your inner ear to help you stay upright – this is what's called vestibular perception.
And the traditional five senses might not be as simple as they seem. Touch, the sense we associate with our hands and tactile sensations, also encompasses the sensation of pain, temperature and itch. To perceive the flavours in food and drink, you need a combination of taste, smell and touch to get the full experience – it's not all about the taste buds on your tongue!
It is actually smell that contributes most of what we perceive as taste, so when a person suffers olfactory loss, they often can't enjoy food as much, according to a 2022 study published in Foods by Fjaeldstad and Smith.
Until recently, philosophers and scientists have studied each of the traditional five senses in isolation, but researchers at the University of London's Centre for the Study of the Senses have more of a multisensory approach – the senses are all working together to create an overall picture.
In their 'Rethinking the Senses' project, they found that our perception of salt, sweet and sour flavours is reduced when there is white noise, but our perception of umami is not. This means that sound can enhance flavour, and that umami-rich foods like tomato juice might taste better on a plane.
So, perhaps humans are far more sensory creatures than Aristotle ever imagined. From balance and body awareness to the way sound can change flavour, our senses are constantly working together in ways we rarely notice.
词汇表
five senses [ˈsensɪz] 五种感官，五感
proprioception [ˌprəʊpriəˈsepʃn] n. 本体感觉（感知身体各部位在空间中的位置）
interoception [ˌɪntərəʊˈsepʃn] n. 内感受（感知身体内部的状态）
take something for granted [ˈɡrɑːntɪd] 视某事为理所当然
fluid [ˈfluːɪd] n. 液体，流体；adj. 流动的
inner ear 内耳（控制身体平衡和听力）
stay upright [ʌpˈraɪt] 保持直立，保持平衡，站稳
vestibular perception [veˈstɪbjələ(r) pəˈsepʃn] 前庭觉（对平衡和空间定向的感知）
tactile sensation [ˈtæktaɪl senˈseɪʃn] 触感，触觉
encompass [ɪnˈkʌmpəs] vt. 包含，包括，涵盖
itch [ɪtʃ] n. 痒；vi. 发痒
flavour [ˈfleɪvə(r)] n. 味道，风味
taste bud [bʌd] 味蕾
olfactory loss [ɒlˈfæktəri lɒs] 嗅觉丧失
in isolation [ˌaɪsəˈleɪʃn] 孤立地，单独地
multisensory [ˌmʌltiˈsensəri] adj. 多感官的，多感觉的
white noise 白噪音
umami [uˈmɑːmi] n. （食物的）鲜味
sensory [ˈsensəri] adj. 感官的，感觉的
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