Smells and Bells

This book did a great job at illustrating all of the senses that humans possess by exploring how individuals explore and experience the world through these different types of observation.  I like how her book describes the scientific and subjective experiences of the senses.  Ackerman accurately describes the anatomy of our brain and how we process sound waves, light waves, etc.  Furthermore, she explains how even though people process this information the same way scientifically, we all share different subjective experiences and feelings about the information we perceive.  The part about hearing really interested me because of my love and awareness for music.  Although every individual experiences music through sound waves, music impacts each individual differently.  Music is known to have physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and therapeutic impacts on individuals.          ...

​ It is nighttime on the planet Earth.  But that is only a whim of nature, a result of our planet rolling in space at 1,000 miles per minute.  What we call night is the time we spend facing the secret reaches of space, where other solar systems and, perhaps, other planetarians dwell.  Don’t think of the night as the absence of day; think of it as a kind of freedom.  Turned away from our sun, we see the dawning of far-flung galaxies. ​ As you can imagine, this quote in the chapter on vision caught my attention because it gives you a cool, different perspective on night and day that I personally have never thought about.  Also, it paints a picture in my head about how vast the universe really is.  As we spend our daily lives we focus our attention on objects that are very close in distance.  For example, we normally look at our laptops, cell phone, friends, the car in front of us, etc.  Rarely do we look at the night sky and get a good glimpse of...

​ One of the most soothing things in the world is to put your tongue to the roof of your mouth right behind your teeth and sing la, la, la, la, la, la.  When we sing, not only do our vocal cords vibrate, but so do some of our bones.  Hum with your mouth closed , and the sound travels to your inner ear directly through the skull, not bothering with the eardrum. ​ This was the opening paragraph to the section on music and emotion and it really caught my attention.  Personally, I don’t sing but I love listening to music and I believe it is the number one thing to calm me down in stressful situations.  I have noticed it have significant beneficial impacts in my life and have heard the same from many of my friends and family.  Many people listen to music in the shower, in the car, while they do homework, while they write/read, while they eat, etc.  Music is invested in many of our lives and we use it to express our feelings and emotions at times we don’t even...

​ After reading the chapter on taste, I thought about all of the places that I have lived or visited, and how different all of the food is in regard to taste.  In addition, the customs are different, the portion sizes are different, and the meal times are different among many other things.  In the book, I thought it was interesting when the author said that every culture uses food as a sign of approval or commemoration, and that some foods are eaten religiously or symbolically.  For example, the author stated that, “ Jews attend a Seder to eat a horseradish dish to symbolize the tears shed by the ancestors when they were slaves in Egypt.  Mayans celebrate important events with rice, the inspirational center of their lives.  The ancient Egyptians thought onions symbolized the many-layered universe .”  Some people might think that taste is so simple, but taste and food is what drives culture and diversity in the world.  The sense of taste enhances our a...

​ One of the interesting parts of this chapter that caught my attention was the segment on pain.  It reminded me of some of my friends from school and home.  A few of them can handle getting punched in the face time after time and claim that they barely feel anything.  I also have a couple of friends with very low tolerances that are much more vulnerable to feeling pain.  I find myself somewhere in between, but it is odd that pain is so subjective and that everyone experiences it differently.  In the book, it states, “ One of the great riddles of biology is why the experience of pain is so subjective.  Being able to withstand pain depends to a considerable extent on culture and tradition.  Many soldiers have denied pain despite appalling wounds, not even requesting morphine .”  Perhaps after long periods of time some individuals are able to build up pain tolerances that are significantly higher then other people.  In regard to the effect of ...

One rainy night in 1976, a thirty-three-year-old mathematician went out for an after-dinner stroll.  Everyone considered him not just a gourmet but a wunderkind, because he had the ability to taste a dish and tell you all its ingredients with shocking precision.  One writer described it as a kind of “perfect pitch.”  As he stepped into the street, a slow-moving van ran into him and he hit his head on the pavement when he fell.  The day after he got out of the hospital, he discovered to his horror t hat his sense of smell was gone. This is an example from the book of a person who developed anosmia as a result of an accident to the head.  This disabled his brain in such a way that it now could not interpret sensory information as a sense of smell.  Specifically, there has been damage to the olfactory bulbs which means now the person is no longer able to smell or distinguish different scents.  Some people develop anosmia in ways that are similar to the...