Debunking popular myths

Science exposed: The 10 senses you didn't know you had

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Contrary to popular belief, our body is capable of perceiving a lot more than what sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch have to offer. Scientists studying perception have discovered at least 30 senses in addition to the five described by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. These complementary senses are called interoceptors, since they allow us to recognize and feel our inner sensations. Join us to learn about 10 senses you didn't know you had!

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Kinaesthesia is a sense that allows us to perceive the position, movement, and state of our body, internal and external. In our daily activities, we hardly notice it, but it’s there, working for us all the time.

This process is, in turn, subdivided into two senses: proprioception —the perception of our body in the space around us— and interoception —the perception of our internal organs. But we will look into these two in more detail below.

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Proprioception is the ability to perceive the position and movement of our limbs and torso, which allows us to control our body during daily activities. It is, in turn, the innate ability to discern the position and movement of body parts independently of visual information.

This faculty involves an intricate interplay between muscle memory, spatial awareness, and feedback from muscles and joints. It is fundamental to perform complex movements with precision. Thanks to proprioception, you can tell where your different body parts are located, even if your eyes are closed or you are not looking at your body.

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Interoception is the ability to sense our organism, providing information about the functioning or dysfunction of the internal organs. Although often underestimated, interoception is vital for survival: it helps us to maintain body balance and allows us to perceive when we are injured, when something is wrong with our body, when we need more oxygen, or to eat or drink water.

Interoceptive receptors are distributed throughout the body, usually in all the major organs and blood vessels. However, not all people's interoceptive receptors function correctly, which can cause different problems. These alterations can be due to excess or deficit; there may be a hypersensitivity that causes the interoceptive receptors to be activated with little stimulation, or they may not be triggered at all.

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This one's tricky. It is hard to define because it is a more abstract sense. In appearance, it is similar to interoception and proprioception, but it is a bit more complex. Cenesthesia is described as the awareness of being alive, the sensation of well-being or feeling sick. It is the name given to the singular set of sensations that an individual possesses of his or her own body.

In other words, everyone feels different: this unique and intangible experience of the inner self is cenesthesia.

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Nociception is a neural process by which the body handles potentially harmful stimuli against body tissues. The term was coined by the British neurophysiologist Charles Scott Sherrington to describe the physiological process of pain. It derives from the Latin nocere, meaning "to damage".

This mechanism is crucial to protect the organism, as it allows us to identify and react to external injuries or aggressions. However, there are several disorders that can alter the way some people perceive pain.

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Thermoception is the ability to perceive temperature and is a critical sensory function. It relies on thermal receptors in the skin, which send signals to the brain through specific nerve fibers. These receptors respond to different temperature ranges, allowing us to distinguish between cold, hot, and neutral temperatures.

Thermoception also allows us to adapt to different temperatures. But this ability varies from person to person. People sense temperature changes differently due to factors such as age, lifestyle habits, and health problems. In fact, some people with certain medical conditions like diabetes or Parkinson's, for example, may have difficulty sensing and reacting to temperature changes.

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As its name suggests, equilibrioception is the sense of balance and is one of the most important physiological senses. Basically, it is the sense that gives us spatial awareness and allows us to walk without falling. It involves the visual system and the vestibular system through the inner ear.

In humans, balance develops during the first years of life and begins to decline in old age. Some animals have this sense more developed than humans; for example, cats can walk and keep their balance on very narrow surfaces using their inner ears and tails without falling.

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Our perception of time is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, deeply rooted in the brain’s neurological processes. This intricate sense, called chronoception, is not just a passive recording of events, but an active construction of temporal experiences.

There are no "time receptors" in the body, so it’s not a traditional sense. Chronoception is a sophisticated cognitive and emotional process that not only has a neurological basis but also a psychological dimension influenced by age, culture, biological rhythms, and temporal illusions.

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Simply put, baresthesia is the sense responsible for detecting pressure changes in the body. This function is carried out by specialized receptors located primarily in the skin, muscles, joints, and other tissues.

Baresthesia is essential for the regulation of balance, posture, and proper interaction with the environment. Alterations related to this sense are associated with several medical conditions, including spinal cord injuries, strokes, and degenerative disorders, among others.

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Not all human beings have developed this sense. It refers to the perception of smells when listening to music, or even smelling and tasting colors. In other words, it is the joint perception or interference of several types of feelings from different senses in the same perceptive act.

A synaesthete can, for example, hear colors, see sounds, or perceive taste when touching an object with a certain texture.

Some names stick around

From Table Tap Joe to Ziggy Stardust: Who are the best song characters?

Sometimes, a character is the perfect alter-ego to write a song about oneself without self-referencing so much. Other times, a character is just a character. Over the years, musicians have come up with lonely dreamers, fearless heroes, mysterious strangers, and even supernatural villains who have become just as famous as the songs themselves. Some were inspired by real people, others sprang entirely from imagination, but all of them left a lasting mark on music history. Which of these 12 do you remember?

Tom Waits has always had a soft spot for society's oddballs, and few are even stranger than Table Top Joe. Introduced on the 2002 album Alice, Joe is born with only a head and hands, yet grows into a brilliant piano player whose extraordinary talent earns him fame despite the odds stacked against him.

The song unfolds like a forgotten American folk tale, complete with references to Coney Island's legendary Dreamland amusement park and composer Igor Stravinsky. Although many listeners assume the story is based on an old carnival legend, Table Top Joe is entirely Tom Waits' own creation.

Few fictional musicians have ever become as famous as Ziggy Stardust. Introduced in 1972, Ziggy is an alien rock star sent to Earth shortly before humanity's end, only to be consumed by the very fame that makes him a savior to millions.

David Bowie blurred the line between fiction and reality by performing as Ziggy onstage for more than a year. When he unexpectedly announced Ziggy's retirement during a concert at London's Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, many fans believed the character, and perhaps Bowie himself, had truly reached the end of the story.

Tommy Walker isn't just the hero of a song, he's the central figure of one of rock music's first great operas. After witnessing a traumatic event as a child, Tommy becomes deaf, mute, and blind, yet somehow develops astonishing pinball skills that transform him into an unlikely celebrity.

Pete Townshend built an entire musical world around Tommy, exploring themes of trauma, faith, and redemption. First released in 1969, Tommy later became a hit film, a Broadway production, and one of the most influential concept albums ever recorded.

Johnny B. Goode is every aspiring musician's dream. Growing up in rural Louisiana with little more than a guitar and natural talent, he plays so brilliantly that listeners predict "his name will be in lights."

Chuck Berry based the character partly on himself and partly on pianist Johnnie Johnson. Originally described as a "colored boy," Johnny became a "country boy" in the final lyrics, making the song more likely to receive airplay during the segregation era. Nearly two decades later, Johnny's anthem would even travel into space aboard NASA's Voyager Golden Record.

Few fictional characters have captured loneliness as powerfully as Eleanor Rigby. She quietly moves through life unnoticed, while Father McKenzie delivers sermons that no one hears, creating one of popular music's saddest portraits of isolation.

Paul McCartney later explained that Eleanor's name came from actress Eleanor Bron and the Liverpool shop Rigby & Evens. The discovery of an actual Eleanor Rigby gravestone in Liverpool only deepened the song's mystique, though McCartney maintained the coincidence was unintentional.

Billie Jean may be one of pop music's most famous women, yet Michael Jackson insisted she wasn't a real person. Instead, she represented several women who falsely claimed that he had fathered their children during the height of the Jackson 5's fame.

Released in 1983 as part of Thriller, the song became a global phenomenon. It also provided the stage for Jackson's legendary moonwalk during Motown 25.

Unlike many legendary song characters, Stagger Lee actually existed. His real name was Lee Shelton, a St. Louis criminal who murdered Billy Lyons during an argument over a hat on Christmas Eve in 1895.

The shocking crime quickly entered American folklore through countless folk songs before Lloyd Price transformed it into a chart-topping hit in 1958. More than a century later, Stagger Lee remains one of the most enduring antiheroes in American music.

Tom Dooley was inspired by Thomas Dula, a Confederate veteran executed in North Carolina in 1868 after being convicted of murdering Laura Foster. His surname was locally pronounced "Dooley," giving the ballad its familiar title.

The Kingston Trio revived the old Appalachian folk song in 1958, turning it into an international hit and helping launch America's folk music revival.

When the narrator of "Lola" meets an intriguing stranger in a Soho nightclub, expectations quickly give way to surprise. Ray Davies crafted one of rock's earliest mainstream stories exploring gender ambiguity, decades before the topic entered popular conversation.

The recording rarely reached British radio. Because BBC rules prohibited commercial product names, Davies had to interrupt a U.S. tour and fly back to London simply to replace the lyric "Coca-Cola" with the now-famous "cherry cola."

Unlike most famous song characters, the Piano Man is really Billy Joel himself. Before becoming a superstar, Joel spent six months in 1972 and 1973 performing under the pseudonym Bill Martin at the Executive Room, a piano bar in Los Angeles, after becoming trapped in a bad recording contract. The song transforms those experiences into a bittersweet portrait of ordinary people searching for escape at the end of another week.

Joel has said that virtually every character in the song was based on a real person, from bartender John to "Paul, the real estate novelist" and Davy, who really was in the Navy. Yet the Piano Man himself became the story's most enduring character: a quiet observer who offers music as a brief refuge for dreamers, lonely souls, and regulars alike. More than fifty years after its 1973 release, "Piano Man" remains Billy Joel's signature song, and its title has effectively become his lifelong nickname.

Standing nearly seven feet tall and missing an arm, Amos Moses roams the Louisiana swamps hunting alligators. Jerry Reed filled the song with colorful Southern expressions and exaggerated storytelling that make Amos feel like an authentic folk legend.

Although fictional, Amos embodies the larger-than-life heroes found throughout American tall tales. His adventures turned the song into one of Reed's biggest crossover hits and secured Amos a permanent place among country music's greatest characters.

Big Bad John hardly says a word, but he doesn't have to. The towering coal miner earns everyone's respect through quiet strength before sacrificing his own life to save fellow workers when a mine collapses.

Jimmy Dean's 1961 ballad became a smash hit, winning a Grammy and inspiring several sequel songs. More than sixty years later, Big Bad John still stands as one of country music's defining working-class heroes.