Humanpowers

"We are built out of very small stuff, and we are embedded in a very large cosmos, and the fact is that we are not very good at understanding reality at either of those scales."

Child’s soul via Pinterest

That's how neuroscientist David Eagleman – creator of stacks of compelling research, books, and series about the brain - introduced human perception at a Ted Talk in 2015.

Isn't he right? Just close your eyes and time-travel back to that year for a moment: you've just seen a picture of a blue bodycon dress with black lace fringe and begun to argue with your friend, who states that that same dress is actually white, with gold lace fringe.

The Science behind the dress, via The New York Times. Rosa Lafer-Sousa

Who's right? The web is polarized, and it's not going to give you an answer: on the one side, those thinking like you; on the other side, those supporting your friend. The fact is that both and none of you are right. Because colors depend. On what? Well, on our biological design, and on the inputs we receive in relation to the context we're immersed in.

As neuroscientist Jay Neitz states, indeed, visual receptors can work very differently from one human being to another, and the changing daylight influences the color's perception of what we're looking at.

A manufacturing defect or a human trademark?

Acknowledging that the world we see is not exactly the same as the world our friends and family do can be astonishing, but realizing that we're not able to perceive reality as it truly is might be an even more overwhelming realization. How do we know that what we're seeing is real? What we call home turns out to be a slice of perception we are trapped in. But as we grow up, we get so used to our version of the world that we credit only our Umwelt, forgetting that there is much more than just what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.

Photography by Florence Tétier and Nicolas Coulomb, Make-up Isamaya Ffrench

For instance, dogs' sense of smell - whether it is used to save a life or to find a kibble rolled under the sofa one week ago - is unbeatable; bats have the ability to orient themselves by emitting ultrasound; pigeons have a kind of inner compass that senses the earth's magnetic field and orient them.

"And humans?" Might you ask. Human beings don't have any specific, highly developed sense, but they do have the ability to make connections and use what they have intelligently.

Superpowers

Let's take the case of people with one of the senses hindered. To cope with that deficiency, they develop the ability to increase the sensibility of the others, crafting real superpowers.

For example, David Eagleman manufactured a special vest for deaf people in his laboratory. It works thanks to a tablet capturing sounds and transferring them to the vibratory motors the vest is covered in: even if the person has never heard a sound, the brain is able to learn vibratory signals and interpret them as words.

Photo by Lars Norgaard. Courtesy of Cyborg Arts

Another example is that of Neil Harbisson, an "eyeborg" born completely color blind, now able to see colors through sounds thanks to a device attached to his head. This electronic eye translates colors into sounds, and Neil's brain has understood how to match frequency and colors to see the nuances of what surrounds him.

What's beautiful about his experience is the fact that, thanks to his third eye, he can now see music as colors and paintings as symphonies, witnessing that the human brain, when enabled to receive the inputs, knows no limit in interpreting reality.

Beyond the five senses

What's marvelous about human perception is that there's much more to it than we bear to believe. Not only as far as perception's abilities are concerned, but also to the entity of the senses themselves. Although only five senses became mainstream, our perception of the world is built upon many others. There are senses that, playing in the background, support our vital functions: there's proprioception, the ability to know exactly where your body is, for example in this very moment you're reading this article, or echolocation, the skill to understand – as bats do - your surroundings thanks to sounds. There is synesthesia, the fascinating phenomenon where the boundaries between sensory modalities blur and colors gain a sound or sounds are described in colors (I personally feel tastes as shapes, for instance), and there is interoception, the sense of the body's internal state - the father of the so-called "gut feeling."

All these different senses contribute to the creation of our Umwelt, which is certainly a limited experience of the world, but a very personal one: a trademark making any of us unique.