Our brain is constantly weighing and calculating (interpreting) multiple internal and external factors and inputs to arrive at its predictions—all within the context of what is normal for us—to determine what is going on and to prepare our response.
The neural wiring that generates perception is not identical, person-to-person. One outcome of this is what we could consider a diminishment of perception (color blindness, face blindness, aphantasia, for example). An outcome on the other end of the spectrum of so-called sensory processing disorders is a supersense—not the superhero variety, but an enhanced ordinary sense.
Those of us who don’t have any super senses probably don’t think much about them. But surprisingly, 25% of the population has heightened taste sensitivity. These people, known as supertasters, tend to have more tastebuds on their tongues, and some have a genetic mutation of a receptor for bitter taste.
Other super senses are tactile hypersensitivity, which makes ordinary tactile sensations painful or bothersome, hyperosmia, enhanced sense of smell, which can be a result of genetics, a medical condition, or training, and hyperacusis, super sound, which is generally a result of disease or some other medical condition.
The Color Purple
Tetrachromacy is a genetic mutation that allows some people to distinguish 100 times more colors than the rest of us, which is mindboggling, given we can normally distinguish around a million different hues. But colors are not objective properties of objects in the world. Allen Tager, a Russian American artist and cognitive scientist, noticed that the color violet was virtually absent from paintings completed before the Impressionist era, beginning in 1863. He attempted to determine why this was the case. In reporting on his research in Aeon, he noted:
International surveys showed that people tend to be unsure about exactly what constitutes the colour violet. The same person who describes an object’s colour as violet today might describe it as purple, blue, magenta, fuchsia or burgundy tomorrow. Language plays a role, too—there’s a difference even between British English and American English. The colour beyond blue on the spectrum is called purple in the US, but violet in the UK. Reddish-purple is sometimes called violet in the US, but hardly so in Britain. The complete range of colours between red and blue is often called purple in British texts, but sometimes the word violet is used, too.
Neuroscientist Anil Seth points out that colors only exist in the interaction between our brain and the physical world. They exist neither out there in the world nor in here inside the brain. They are essentially constructed.
Several years ago, I used ink color to differentiate categories in a print document I shared with a number of other people. The shade of green I selected for one of the categories looked green to me both in print and on the computer, and the computer program identified it as green. But so many people saw it as a shade of brown or gray that I changed the color to something more obviously green. Consensus reality as determined by myself, the other people who saw green, and the computer program said that seeing green was the correct perception. But does it make sense to deem a different perception wrong?
People with hypersensitivities don’t tend to experience them as enhancements, meaning they don’t automatically enjoy them. Of course, if the cause is genetic, they have nothing to compare their experience with, just as those of us who don’t have a hypersensitivity have nothing to compare our experience with. But for the most part, moment-to-moment we have nothing to compare any of our experiences with.
Again, we can’t tell by looking at someone, whether or not they have any hypersensitivity, unless perhaps they’re in a situation where they’re confronted with a stimulus.
Additional Senses
The brain also receives additional sensory information beyond the five basic senses. Other sensory systems include vestibular (balance), proprioception (body position), kinesthesia (movement), nociception (pain), and thermoception (temperature).
Scientists are still trying to determine why people with red hair have differences in regard to pain threshold (lower), pain sensitivity (higher), and response to pain medication (higher or lower depending on the type of drug), but they do.
A friend I used to spend a lot of time outdoors with—walking, hiking, or lazing—would start seeking shade when the temperature approached 70 degrees, the point at which I was just starting to enjoy the warmth. She spent New Mexico summers inside with the air conditioner on and the blinds closed. I haven’t used indoor cooling for the past 10 years.
Including these additional five senses doubles the types of sensory data our brain is tracking in order to keep us alive and provide us with a sense of what’s happening to and around us in order to determine what we ought to do about it. Like the original five senses, we tend to take these senses for granted unless we begin having trouble maintaining our balance or we develop chronic pain, at which point the brain will bring the change in the status quo to our attention.
When you’re tempted to fall back on the belief that you experience the world as it is, try to imagine some of the millions of colors you can’t see…and name them.