-When you think of the senses,
you probably think
of five different ones.
Six, if you're into that.
Sight
sound
taste, touch
and smell.
They are the building blocks
of experience,
of creativity,
of happiness, even.
And for some reason,
we like to separate them.
Seeing a sunset versus tasting
a ripe peach
equally inspiring,
but totally different.
Right?
Well, not exactly.
The body is actually
like a sponge,
constantly absorbing
all these sensations
from the world around us.
And as they enter through
our eyes, ears, skin,
they begin to swirl together.
What emerges is our own
unique picture of reality,
one that we become
completely immersed in.
- When we're going
out there on the ice
and Tarah's 8 feet
above my head,
you have to start to learn
to use another sense
of being able to know where
your partner's going to be.
-I am so focused on the task
at hand
and what is in front of me
at exactly that moment
that nothing else matters.
- My name is Tarah Kayne.
- And I'm Danny O'Shea.
-And we are pairs figure skaters
who train in Colorado Springs.
We have been skating together
for eight years.
-Danny and Tarah are at
the top of their game,
national champions
and real contenders
for the next Olympics
which means they can do
crazy stunts
in perfect unison
like clockwork.
And performing at that level
requires tapping into
all the senses
and then some.
-Before the competition,
I make myself thoroughly
aware of the rink.
I see the whole rink and I smell
what the rink smells like,
I feel how cold
it's going to be there.
-Our senses all interact
with each other.
Our sensory system is
a very complex system
that allows
the environmental stimuli
to be converted
into electrical activity
that our brain
and our spinal cord can process.
-On every cell of our body,
we maintain a little battery,
which has a voltage.
-In our fingertips, in our eyes,
and our ears,
we have the ability
to sense small changes
in our environment
that create small changes
of voltage.
A bigger change
in the sensed world
creates a bigger change
across that cell membrane.
That is something that's
really good for sensation.
- So, for example,
the sound of a blade
cutting through the ice
becomes electricity.
Specialized cells called neurons
transmit that information
to the brain
which instantly combines it
with other data,
like the rush of cold air
and the blur of limbs
as the skaters move together
across the rink.
This all happens while
they are spinning,
jumping, and landing
on a piece of metal that's only
5 millimeters thick.
-Pairs figure skating
is definitely dangerous.
You're skating on
a very hard surface.
We have blades on the end
of our feet.
-Some of the major elements
in pair skating
is first the lift.
She's either upright or on
her stomach or on her back.
We have three and a half turns
in our lifts.
Then you have your jumps
next to each other
and landing in unison.
Then you have your throw
into the air.
She does the hard part,
rotates and lands.
We have spins connected
or side by side,
spinning in one spot on the ice.
Death spiral is another one.
♪♪
I put my toe pick in the ice
and do a pivot
and she holds my hand
and she spins around me
for a couple revolutions.
-When I'm on the ice,
it's just focus.
When we change venues,
the colors are all different
and all the sides of the rink
look the same,
so I don't really have
any visual points of reference.
-Our previous experience
always adds
onto our sensory experience.
This information has
to quickly integrate
with all the other senses.
-The performance becomes
so routine,
and the senses are like us
doing the elements
and feeling the elements
- Yeah.
- Instead of thinking through
the elements.
-I have to know by
how I feel in the air.
A lot of times we practice
with my eyes closed
so that I don't get confused,
and then I try to come out
of the air at the wrong point
and that can get dangerous.
-At the speeds Danny and Tarah
are moving,
five senses just won't cut it.
So they rely on something
even more fundamental.
Some people call it
the sixth sense,
but it could just as easily
be called the first
Proprioception.
In simple terms, the sense
of where your body is in space.
-So you can imagine there's
a two-way highway of signals
that constantly reaches areas
of your body
that are far away
from the brain.
Those areas actually
tell something
about the status
of your body to the brain.
-Wrapped around specialized
fibers inside every muscle
are tiny springs
that stretch when we move.
The precise direction and speed
of that motion
activate receptors in the spring
that create
an electrical signal.
-Those receptors send
that information
to different parts of the brain.
When the brain processes that,
it sends information back
for example, our motor nerves,
to say, "Move your hand."
-All of us use this sense
constantly.
Without it, you wouldn't be able
to pick up a glass
or touch your nose in the dark.
But on the ice, it's critical
for knowing
when to stop rotating,
or where to place your blade
so it doesn't nick your partner.
And yet, for pairs skaters,
there's still one more
challenge.
And it is the most elusive.
-We have to have such
synchronization and unison.
-You need to have chemistry
together as a team.
And physically, your bodies
need to match.
At this point in time,
I know every tap
Every squeeze.
I know almost what he's going
to do before he does it.
When we're doing lifts,
Danny will just slightly grip
my body in a way
that communicates to me
that it's time for me
to change positions.
And we've never
even discussed that.
-The synergy that Danny
and Tarah have created
over years of training
has a lot to do with touch,
and its unique ability
to deepen a physical connection.
-We have the mechanical
receptors in our skin
for physical touch,
and that information that's
converted to electrical activity
ultimately feeds
through our spinal cord
and gets to parts in our brain
that senses that that was
a mechanical touch.
However, the signal also goes
to other parts of our brain
that encode an emotional
aspect to that touch.
And the brain can dissociate
a mechanical touch
and the emotional connectivity
of that touch.
-This duality helps us
sense the difference
between a hug and pinch.
But there are many more layers
of subtlety touch can uncover.
All it takes is the dedication
to learn them.
-We've worked a very long time
to have that second nature thing
where I can put my hand out
and she can just grab it,
and we're together.
-There's no doubt that emotions
depend on touch.
There's a reason
they're called feelings.
But all of our senses
can create emotional responses.
And it has to do with
how different parts of the brain
speak to each other.
-We're starting to finally
get a glimpse
into the inner workings
of the brain.
A really interesting field
called optogenetics
has been able to help us
study the brain
by getting parts of it
to light up
as it's functioning.
And so we're starting
to get a sense of
how is it that the cells
of the brain
can craft our emotional
experience of the world.
-One of the most potent
emotional triggers is smell.
♪♪
♪♪
Like dreams, smells have
the ability
to reveal things that are buried
deep in the unconscious mind.
But it happens
while you're awake.
-Fragrance allows you
to armchair travel.
What's great about
using materials
like cilantro from Mexico
or Italian parsley
you can go to a place through
the voyage of olfaction.
They spray that fragrance around
them, and then they think,
"Oh, my God, I'm suddenly
on a beach in Indonesia.
I'm in Thailand."
And that feeling
of giving someone
that ability to travel
momentarily to that place
is something so powerful
and so potent.
♪♪
I'm Yosh Han,
and I create fragrances
for a living.
-There's some senses
that are much more powerful.
Smell actually is
a very powerful sense.
-We used to think that humans
could only detect
about 10,000 distinct smells.
Turns out, that number is
actually closer to a trillion.
And it all starts
with tiny hairs.
Smells, as we know them,
don't really exist.
At first, they're just
pieces of air,
molecules that waft
into the nose.
- Inside our nose
we have cells called cilia.
They're made of the same thing
that makes your hair.
These cilia have the ability
to pick up these molecules
that are around us.
- The cilia direct
air molecules to receptors
underneath the lining
of the nostril.
There are around
400 kinds of receptors
that pick up different scents,
and the same receptor
can be activated
by more than one odor
like a lock that has
10 different keys.
Whatever you're smelling
lights up a unique pattern
of receptors,
and they send impulses
to the brain.
Think about the smell of coffee.
It's actually made up
of 800 different molecules.
It's only when this complex
mosaic of signals
reaches the brain that a smell
as we know it comes into being.
-I don't actually necessarily
sit in a lab
with a white lab coat.
That's just not my forte.
Rather, what I do is a much more
creative approach.
What I like to do is think about
using the olfactive materials
as kind of like paint
or an instrument,
if you were a musician.
Some people smell in numbers,
some people smell in colors,
and I have more
that smell in textures.
I smell scratchy things.
I smell smooth things.
I view olfaction as a narrative.
I view ingredients
as characters,
and so I'm constantly
composing in my mind.
-Being a perfumer requires
some serious training.
Smell is 10,000 times more
sensitive than any other sense.
So a professional like Yosh
hones that over time,
and in the process,
learns how to tap
into the strong associations
that smells create in the brain.
-The sense of smell is
the strange guy in neuroscience.
If you look at how the sense
of smell works,
we can identify
a variety of things
that are actually only specific
for the olfactory system.
Even the brain regions to which
our olfactory system
connects are very different
than the other senses.
-Most of our senses
are processed
by a part of the brain
called the thalamus.
The thalamus is like
a switchboard,
relaying those sensory signals
to other parts of the brain.
But for reasons that we're
still trying to uncover,
our smell signals initially
bypass the thalamus altogether
and head straight
to the olfactory bulb
Which connects
to other, older regions
that are responsible
for emotion.
This gives smell a special
ability to create feelings
on a subconscious level.
- Hi.
- Hey!
- How are you?
- Good.
- I'm Yosh.
- Yosh. I'm Sean.
- Sean.
- Nice to meet you.
- Welcome.
- How are you doing?
- Good.
I make fragrances for myself,
I design fragrances for myself,
but I also spend
a fair amount of time
creating custom fragrances
for individuals.
Do you like wearing fragrance?
- I don't know.
This is an interesting gift.
Oh, perfect. Perfect.
I'll do a little intake for him,
because I really want to know,
what does he like to eat?
What does he like
to do on his off time?
Where did you grow up?
- I grew up in Hawaii.
- Hawaii.
So, like, you've grown up
with salt, the waves,
and maybe some tropical fruits.
We have so many materials
that we can choose from.
So I'll show him a range.
What I'm looking for
is if someone really loves
the smell of something,
their whole body just lifts up,
and that's really
what we're trying to capture
in a custom fragrance.
It's a Mojito.
- Yum, okay.
And you like c*ck?
Love c*ck.
- Yeah.
- So let's move
into the fruit notes.
What looks good to you?
- Number one,
I would go to the mango,
then I would go to the pear.
I would've went
to the guava third.
- Okay, guava third.
- Mango, number one.
-Okay, that's good to know.
-Smells are visceral.
We love some.
- We hate others.
And this immediate connection
between smell and emotion
points to our evolution
as a species.
At first, we needed
sensitive noses to survive.
And that is reflected
in the brain.
-The olfactory system
directly speaks
to what we called
high-level regions,
like the amygdala,
related to the perception
of threats.
-Our amygdala is able
to look at the outside world
and put it into
an emotional context,
and then communicate
with other parts of your brain
which will help you decide,
"Hey, you're in a safe
environment.
Don't be afraid."
-It's a little bit primal.
That's how it originally
was experienced.
And I think over millennia,
it went from
you smell death, you smell
a winner, you smell a rat,
and then it became more of
a pleasure-seeking
way to navigate in the world.
We're gonna do top notes,
middle notes, and base notes.
- Okay.
- We're gonna start with
the green notes,
or the top notes, okay?
Okay. Smell that
and tell me
-That's gonna be
Yeah. This right here is
That's an 8.
-What about cucumber?
-This is going to be a 10.
I'll tell you right now.
- With perfumes,
you can really access
someone's subconscious
and their inner deep emotions.
How we think, how we feel.
You can imagine a vista,
a landscape, especially,
of a certain place.
But what if that place
is an emotional place,
or personal space?
I can bring them from the past
into the present
or into the future.
I'm going to actually have
you smell some flowers.
You mentioned that
you were from Hawaii.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, this reminds me
of my auntie.
I just got goose bumps, like,
like this is
a pretty serious thing.
She passed away about
eight years ago from cancer
and she was my
She was like my mom.
I haven't thought
about her in a while.
It's, um
it's pretty heavy.
-Part of the network
that smell moves through
is not just instinct
and feeling,
but a connection to the past.
And that's the power
of fragrance, right?
- Yeah.
- The brain keeps
all of these memories,
and you think that they're gone.
And something happens
in the environment,
and it triggers that memory,
and you can actually
smell something
from when you were a child.
All of the memories associated
with that initial odor,
whether it's good or bad,
are released,
and a lot of that is
because of the amygdala.
It stores not only negative,
but also positive, memories.
-So for your final creation,
we have some oud.
We also have salt.
And then we have waves.
Combined together,
we have Ride the Wave.
- Excellent.
That's impressive.
At the end of the day,
they want the smell of home.
"This smells like me."
They want to feel like
they're really in their skin.
Fragrance allows me to tap
into that
in a way that no other thing
really does.
-Even as the brain changes,
memories of smells
remain etched in our minds.
Things we've seen?
Those memories can fade
after just a few hours.
And yet, sight is
the primary sense
we use to navigate
through the world.
-We have a much better sense
of sight
than many other organisms
out there do.
We see a wider range of color,
our vision is more acute,
and we have depth perception.
It may be that we all have
sort of this ancient programming
to respond to images.
-80% of our reality
comes from vision.
So even though it's not as
immediate as other sensations,
it could be considered
the most important.
Which means that for us,
almost nothing
is more disorienting
than finding yourself
total darkness.
And yet, it's in the moments
that test us most
when the true power
of sensation emerges.
-Here on Vancouver Island,
there's a myriad of textures
Colors.
You see it on the reddish,
brownish bark
of the Arbutus tree.
All the green and many colors
on the flowers.
And then just feeling a breeze
off of the ocean.
Fresh air out for a hike,
lots of space, lots of freedom,
and you sense these things
in different ways above ground.
This is where humans
are meant to be.
But when you go below ground,
there are things down there
telling you that you don't
really belong there.
- Keep breathing!
Hands out! Come towards me!
Come this way!
Stay up! Come on, Jason.
-My name is Jason Storie,
I'm an amateur caver,
and I live
in British Columbia, Canada.
When you go into a cave,
there's a certain smell.
It's kind of earthy and damp,
and everything's quiet.
The darkness is so absolute.
It's hard to explain to anyone
who's never experienced it.
You might have a very good
headlamp, but
it only lets you see
so far ahead.
Darkness is still
around the corner.
You just never know
what you're going to find.
-Caves have always been
dangerous places to explore.
One wrong turn, and you
could be lost for days
or forever.
But when you take that
first step into the void,
you're actually way better
equipped than you might think.
-One of the most remarkable
things of our visual system
is that our retina is
actually able to perform
two different things
at the same time.
One group of cells
called the cones
actually activates
in presence of light and color.
But there is another
type of cell.
These are called the rods,
which actually are specific
for situations in which
there is way less light.
These rods provide a vision
that is more black and white,
but still allows you to perceive
certain spatial relationships.
For example, you will be able
to identify certain
sharp objects around you.
You can just imagine
walking inside a cave
in which
you don't have light available.
You are in complete darkness.
And in these kinds of scenarios,
we actually are remarkably good
at seeing things.
-When you go into a cave
and everything's unknown,
you don't know what's
around the next corner.
There's even the possibility
that you might discover
something in a cave
that someone just hasn't gone
and dug out
that one little corner.
-The transition to night vision
isn't immediate.
It takes about 30 minutes
for the retina
to adjust to darkness,
so something else
happens even faster.
-The brain is like a computer
and a movie projector
all at the same time.
And like any other
living system,
it's very adaptable.
-The brain is fascinating
when it's put in a situation
where it can't see.
You're put in pitch black,
and before your visual receptors
can start to acclimate,
the brain starts to put
its own images
of where things should be.
-Groups of specialized cells
deep within the brain
record distance
location
direction, and speed.
They light up as we move around
and become projections that help
us navigate our environment.
Like an internal GPS.
But caves are still notoriously
difficult to chart.
- Andrew Munoz
is a caving expert.
He was the one who got me
into caving.
We had become good friends.
- Show me what I'm doing.
- So I think we'll just get you
to find the wall, and we'll just
have this on as your backup.
- Yeah.
-And on December 5th, 2015,
Andrew and I
and three others went caving.
I had been in Cascade Cave
five weeks earlier with Andrew,
and it was definitely
the toughest cave I'd been in.
Awesome!
It involved
some very tight squeezes,
places where you have to
sort of go on your back,
upside down,
and worm your way through
to the next passage.
You have caves that have
water systems in them.
You'll get drips or trickles
or even waterfalls
that can be
a little more thunderous.
You can be in one passage
and hear thunderous water
roaring nearby,
and then within 90 seconds
have crawled through a tunnel
and be in a big open chamber,
and there's complete silence.
We maybe didn't quite read
all of the signs
that the water level
was on the rise,
and that storm of the year
was brewing outside.
Stop!
That's awful.
-I got a little bit confused
about which direction
I was supposed to go in.
-So I turned around
and went back down the tunnel
to go and ask for directions.
And that's when everything
went sideways.
-Okay, okay, just relax.
Just relax, J.
His head up?
His head still up?
Yeah?
-I got stuck in the tunnel,
like a cork in a bottle.
-A few wrong moves
left Jason in the midst
of sensory chaos that was
about to push his brain
and body to the limit.
-Don't make any fast
moves, okay, J?
You have to keep your head up.
- Yes.
-And we're going to
do this slowly, okay?
-My helmet was against
the ceiling.
Water was coming up over
my shoulders and over my ears.
- Not much left.
- It's in my ears
- Keep coming, dude.
This way, towards me.
-The air around my face
and around my mouth
was only about an inch.
-Keep coming, dude.
You're not stuck.
You're not stuck.
-I had the combination
of sensory deprivation
and sensory overload
all at once.
With the sound of the water
basically drowning out
everything,
with our headlamps off,
I had no sight
and no hearing of anything apart
from the canons of water.
- That's you?
-Jason was experiencing
a two-pronged as*ault
on his senses.
First, by entering the darkness
of the cave at all.
Then, by getting trapped
in the flooding passage.
- You got good hands?
- Yeah.
-Talk to me, dude.
You got good hands?
- Yes.
- Okay.
Lift your hands up
and float, Jase.
Come on.
Try!
Okay?
Dude,. Jase?
look at me, okay?
You made it, all right?
- Yep.
- It's scary.
You made it, okay?
-As soon as Andrew
had gotten me through
and we'd gotten
our legs untangled
and I was sort of free,
I felt like,
"Yes, I've made it out.
He's saved my life and now we're
going to get out of the cave."
But everything slowed down.
We were trapped
for about 12 hours.
-Andrew managed to free
Jason from the direct path
of the water pouring in
from the storm above.
But the flooded tunnels
made an escape impossible
for the team.
-I knew something was wrong
because when I went to speak,
my speech was slurred.
- My left leg is
- It's okay, I'm gonna move you.
Don't move, okay?
Just relax.
- I definitely had
stage 1 hypothermia.
The sound of the roaring water
would cause slight sort
of auditory hallucinations.
-
-I would think that I could
hear voices in the water.
-
-When it's overwhelmed,
the brain's power
can become debilitating.
If sensory inputs
are out of whack
- Go.
- the brain goes haywire
trying to piece things together.
You might end up experiencing
things that are
outside reality,
like phantom sounds.
And when that happens,
the only thing left to do
is try to take in
less information.
-Lying there, trapped and cold
and shivering uncontrollably,
I knew I had to do something.
So I turned to deep
breathing meditation.
I pulled my sweatshirt up
over my head
and I took deep,
deep, long breaths.
-In the past 10 years,
we started studying meditation
as a way to understand
what happens when you direct
all your resources
towards something that is
as internally generated
as possible.
The first rule of meditating
is to somehow
try not to process
anything that comes
from the outside.
-And I concentrated.
I really focused on each
and every breath.
When I exhaled,
I found I could try
to stave off the shivers
by focusing on what my chest
and chin could sense
instead of what the rest
of my body could sense.
There's a lot the brain
can be trained to do.
Being able to control
our thoughts can even help us
with things like
chronic pain and suffering.
That's really the best way
for us to manage stress
and for our brains
to function optimally.
- Ironically,
Jason's survival instinct
was to detach himself
completely from his environment.
To try to cut off
all of his senses,
and turn inward.
And in the end,
that might've been
what saved him.
- Keep fighting.
-At about 3:00 in the morning,
the water was
starting to recede.
It was sort of now or never,
and I knew this was our chance.
Andrew went through first,
and then he sort of guided me
through the tunnel.
-There was a tight squeeze
to get through
to the next sort
of big, open chamber.
We made it through.
That was the point where we saw
lights coming down from above,
and I could hear voices.
- Hello?
- I love you!
- Ha ha!
- Oh, my God!
-I was very, very grateful
that they were there to
To pull us out.
Search and rescue medics
checked us over
and told us that we were fine.
And then it was sort of over,
which was surreal.
My senses were definitely
having a hard time
computing that this world
existed and is normal.
I had to sort of pinch myself
to believe that, yes,
we had made it out.
And here I was standing amongst
the everyday chatter
that your ears normally
take for granted.
-The sensory blackout
Jason lived through
was terrifying but temporary.
Sometimes it's more permanent.
Like a condition called anosmia,
or smell blindness.
But for people whose
senses are reduced,
the drive to adapt
is even stronger.
-We as a species are constantly
evolving in diverse environments
around the world.
There's a whole island
of people in Polynesia,
and there's a really
high incidence of people
who don't see color.
What they do see is
a whole lot of texture
that a lot of "normally sighted"
people don't see.
So you could argue
in an environment rich
with flora and fauna,
the ability to see and discern
the differences
of different plants
that emerge when you can see
these different textures
what's an ability,
and what's a disability?
-The genius of human sensation
is that it learns with us,
especially when we figure out
how to harness it
in an entirely new way.
-Sound is a beautiful thing
that I think we don't pay
enough attention to.
The body is basically
a water bottle.
And all of these vibrations
are smacking into your system
and leaving imprints everywhere.
I like to feel the world
around me.
♪♪
-And as I saw the sky
I wish the clouds ♪
Could catch me
So I could stay up high
and view the world ♪
From above
My name is Mandy Harvey.
I am a singer-songwriter.
I happen to be deaf.
Pray to be
Just sleep
And it won't
- So the sights,
sounds,
and feelings we encounter
are absorbed
by our cells
in exactly the same way.
It's all electricity.
And if that is true,
couldn't we experience the same
stimulus in more than one way?
-I was born with hearing issues.
Throughout my childhood, it was
a very tumultuous experience.
There were constant infections
and surgeries,
and there was almost a full year
where my eardrums
would just stop vibrating.
And it just kept getting worse
and worse and worse.
I realized that no matter
what was going to happen,
it was not going to be what
I thought it was going to be.
But music was always the passion
and the love,
so there was this mix of,
this is my reality,
but this is what
I want to do with my life.
-It's really interesting to me
how adaptive we are as humans.
When we have a reduction
of sensory input
and what that means
in terms of neuroplasticity
and how our other senses
give us even more nuance.
A single base pair deletion
on your DNA
could mean boom.
You're going to lose your vision
in the course of a lifetime.
And yet vision,
it's just another input.
And we as humans can adapt
to all kinds of things.
-When you lose a sense,
everybody says
that your other ones heighten.
I don't really feel
that that's true.
I think you just start
paying attention to them more.
I started paying attention
to other things
to support my dream.
At the very beginning, I would
hold the balloon and talk
or play the radio next to it
and feel all of the vibrations
elevated through
this conduit balloon.
And I fall
Again
I fall
Again
You can feel the difference
from your own voice
compared to like a really bass-y
guy talking at the same time.
And it's just a way for you to
be able to shut off your brain
of what it's supposed to be.
I fall
Again
-I think we're also learning
quite a lot
about the ability
of our minds to adapt
to the information input that
may be shifting over time.
We've seen, for example,
with folks who are blindfolded
for a period of days,
that their brain's ability
to transduce sound
becomes enhanced.
-The more that we consciously
tap into alternative ways
of experiencing sensation,
the better our brains get
at interpreting
that sensation and using it.
In the case of music, though,
there are many different levels
to harness,
and not all of them are
as simple as holding a balloon.
With singing and not being able
to hear yourself,
the part that's difficult
is pitch.
What I do now is sit
in front of a mirror
and put my hand on my throat
with a visual tuner,
find a note,
and then feel where those
vibrations are the strongest.
It's actually here today.
It moved.
And then draw a line or shape
based off of the texture
and then the note to dictate it.
And there's a little tickle
over here as well.
This one is D,
but it feels like it rotates.
I kind of ground myself
moving up and down the scale,
marking from about here
to sometimes all over my face.
The E feels like it's bouncing
in two different places
and kind of washing over
at this whole side.
Where those notes
tickle or rumble
or have like a gummy,
weird feeling
there's so many different things
back and forth
that create the whole picture.
Middle C, it's always, for me,
a feeling around my neck,
right up this crease.
Ooh
And then when I'm writing songs,
if it's something that causes me
an annoyance or a frustration,
I'll put that note
specifically in a song
that's about frustration
or angst or falling.
I know I'm falling again
I see the ground
Approaching
I'm not trying to create
a new wheel.
It's already there.
Maybe if I close my eyes
I will fly away
I just need to take the pieces
apart to paint it out
so I know exactly
what's happening.
All
A dream
-Most human languages
rely primarily
on the production of sound,
so obviously hearing
is important in that sense.
In terms of whether we're
particularly good
at hearing things compared to
how good our visual system is,
is interesting because
it's relatively weak,
while our visual system
is quite strong.
There are many other ways
to communicate,
and obviously we use
body language.
-When I'm playing on stage,
there's so many things
that are happening
at the same time.
You're looking for the head nod
from whoever's playing
the rhythm.
You're looking at their faces
when one person's
taking the lead.
You have bare feet on hard floor
so that you can feel the rhythms
of what's going on around you.
It feels a lot like kind of
like we're dancing.
The weird thing for me now
is that everything vibrates
and it can be very exhausting.
Every once in a while,
you just want to shut it off
and just be numb
for a little bit,
to close your eyes and sleep
and just breathe.
I have this beautiful
hanging chair.
It just kind of shuts off
the ability to feel so much.
You get the movement
and the feeling of the wind.
I like to write in that chair
because I'm more focused
on the calm,
and it allows my brain
to just go.
-So it's not about
only processing
the environmental stimuli
and helping us to navigate
through our world.
The individuality of the brain
and the creativity
of the brain is profound.
But it's not equal.
Each of us have different
levels of creativity.
-Experiencing my own music
without being able to hear it
is different than what
I imagined it would have been,
but it's beautiful
in its own way.
I know I'm falling again
I see the ground
Approaching
A lot of people expect that
I should be sad
that I can't hear
how beautiful my voice is.
And as I peek
I scream aloud
Who cares?
I get to feel what's happening
and I'm paying attention
to things that you ignore.
I fall
Again
I fall
Again
Fool-heartedly
♪♪
So in my eyes,
I feel bad for you
for not being able
to experience music in this way.
-The human capacity
to experience the world
in infinitely diverse ways
is astounding.
And it's not only a testament
to sensation,
but to our profound
creativity as a species.
-It's not just the five senses.
It's not just a real world
that's out there.
Our brains
actually create things.
That aspect of creativity
makes each of us individuals,
and therefore very special.
- Molecules
and light
and vibrations
become memories
and thoughts
and inventions.
Not only do our senses
define our reality
but they help us create
entirely new worlds
All the time.
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01x05 - Sense
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Diverse personal stories from around the world reveal how lives, passions and goals are facilitated by the human body's various complex systems; narrator Jad Abumrad.
Diverse personal stories from around the world reveal how lives, passions and goals are facilitated by the human body's various complex systems; narrator Jad Abumrad.