Ah--how the brain forms a model of reality. I agree with everybody.
Although we speak of distinct "senses," a better description of them might be "areas of more focused interest." Our peripheral nervous system, along with all of our sense organs, form a network, or mesh. Touch one piece of spaghetti, and something moves on the other side of the plate.
Numerous, fascinating studies have demonstrated how:
- taste influences smell
- smell influences taste
- color influences smell and taste
- ambient aromas influence smell and taste
- ambient temperature influences smell and taste
- ambient sound influences vision
- vision influences sound
A wonderful, new book on this wider subject:
Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are, by Jennifer Groh at Duke University.
To add to the confusion, the nervous system is not very good at determining how things "are," but very good at detecting how things "have changed." If you smoke a cigarette, then light up a cigar, it's a different cigar than if you've just been sipping some hot cocoa. If you are surrounded by the fragrance of Febreze, stepping out to light up is a world apart from walking out of a kitchen that's cooking cabbage.
Bob
