Category: Senses
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Touching. You.
Researchers found that gently stroking a baby seems to reduce activity in the infant brain associated with painful experiences. Their results suggest that lightly brushing an infant at a certain speed - of approximately 3 centimeters per second - could provide effective pain relief before clinically necessary medical procedures. (1) Touch. The most cryptic of…
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Smelling the forest… A tree born…
Animals are much better at smelling a complex "soup" of odorants rather than a single pure ingredient, a study by the University of Sussex has revealed. Prof Nowotny, Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange in the University of Sussex's School of Engineering and Informatics, said: "Our study was looking at how olfactory receptors and brain…
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Sign language. Spoken language limitations.
Sign languages are considered by linguists as full-fledged and grammatically very sophisticated languages. But they also have unique insights to offer on how meaning works in language in general. Sign languages can help reveal hidden aspects of the logical structure of spoken language, but they also highlight its limitations because speech lacks the rich iconic…
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![Colour-blind: A surprisingly common problem... [White-balancing red skies]](https://harmoniaphilosophica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/20220820_194120-960x260.jpg)
Colour-blind: A surprisingly common problem... [White-balancing red skies]
Multiple wildfires have ravaged the western United States in the past month, scattering particles of ash and smoke into the air. On Wednesday, residents across the West, woke up to a dark, bronzed sky that nearly shut out all daylight. But as people tried to capture the scene, many noticed a strange phenomenon: Certain photographs…
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Touching.
Every year, museums bear the cost of repairing the damage caused to their artworks by visitors touching them. Why would people want to touch objects they can clearly see? What is it that touch provides that vision does not? Philosophers, starting with René Descartes, all noted that touch provided 'a sense of reality', and made…
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