How the senses deceive us

The five senses (smell, taste, sight, touch, and hearing) They are the mechanisms by which living beings know and relate to the outside world. Information from the environment enters through the senses and travels through the neurons until it reaches the brain, which is in charge of processing the data.

These inform the body about what the world is. Without them, you would have no idea. She would not have seen or heard. You would not taste food or feel anything. Hunger wouldn’t tell you to eat and you wouldn’t perceive the frozen state without your sense of touch.

The big problem is that the senses they are limited and therefore can be misleading. This is mainly due to a perception error (which is the interpretation made by the brain of the stimuli perceived by the senses). The senses and perception can deceive the human for internal or external reasons.

And they are trusted completely. The senses are consulted at every moment of existence and people function accordingly. In a nutshell, these results are acted as if they are accurate and are often wrong.

This is how our senses deceive us:

The senses are limited and are continually deceiving you

Unfortunately for everyone, the senses deceive you, and a lot. They are showing you a very limited world. For example, the eyes and other senses perceive only a small fraction of physical existence and the rest (99%) escapes human consciousness. Everything is happening, right now, but the senses do not detect it.

On the other hand, the ears hear only a small portion of the entire sound spectrum. This means that the vast majority of all possible sounds are not available.

However, you have been convinced that these senses are giving you reality. There are even phrases like “Seeing is believing”, “I saw it with my own eyes” and “I heard it with my own ears” that are really wrong, but there they are.

Examples of how the senses deceive you

External agents that modify our perception: optical illusions

Optical illusions that fool the eye and the brain are those in which a distorted color, shape or perspective of reality is perceived. next you will see a series of examples that you surely know and have experienced.

When a series of drawings is made and then the pages are turned quickly, the sensation that the image has movement is produced. This is the beginning of cinematography.

When a pencil is placed in a glass of water, refraction causes the human eye to see a distorted image of the pencil, which appears to be broken when the reality is otherwise.

If an individual closes his eyes, covers his ears and touches a surface and feels the vibrations of something, he will not be able to perceive whether it is music, a noise produced by a working machine or a nuclear bomb.

When a car is driving on a road and the ambient temperature is high, it is possible to see a miragebecause water is visible on the road, but as the vehicle approaches that location, the water disappears.

Internal agents that modify the perception of the senses

These are other examples of how the body itself often deceives the senses. Here we are no longer talking about external aspects that confuse you, but rather own states that work differently for each other.

High fever, for example, can cause an alteration of what is perceived by the senses. This works in different ways for some and doesn’t even affect many. The brain, on this occasion, plays tricks depending on people and even on how they handle their emotions.

The consumption of drugs can generate some type of hallucinations and that of tobacco can generate dizziness and alteration of the senses. The same thing happens here. Surely you have heard how some experience visions of another planet completely when you do not.

In essence, and as you can finally see, everyone is a prisoner within their own senses and how the brain plays with them and, in the end, each one of the inputs and interpretations that are made is obeyed. This is something unavoidable.