We are all inattentive superheroes
I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how we can make humans better, and what the consequences of making people better might be, so reading about how amazing people already are. Brad Voytek is a neuroscientist, and he has an amazing post on the power of our senses.
We're used to thinking of our senses as being pretty shite: we can't see as well as eagles, we can't hear as well as bats, and we can't smell as well as dogs.
Or so we're used to thinking.
It turns out that humans can, in fact, detect as few as 2 photons entering the retina. Two. As in, one-plus-one.
It is often said that, under ideal conditions, a young, healthy person can see a candle flame from 30 miles away. That's like being able to see a candle in Times Square from Stamford, Connecticut. Or seeing a candle in Candlestick Park from Napa Valley.
Similarly, it appears that the limits to our threshold of hearing may actually be Brownian motion. That means that we can almost hear the random movements of atoms.
We can also smell as few as 30 molecules of certain substances.
I mean, we're talking serious Daredevil-level detection here!
Our sensory organs are limited by the laws of physics, not by biology, or evolution, or anything else. We can detect the universe as well as the universe can be detected. The limits on what we sense are not in our eyes and ears, they're in the brain, where we decide how to pay attention to everything that's coming in. There are probably some valuable lessons for distraction, cognition, and focus, but I'm going to take a day off and just marvel at biology.
Our sensory abilities are certainly marvelous, but don't disparage the superhuman abilities of those animals. Eagles can definitely resolve fine detail farther out than we can and dogs can certainly smell more odors at lower concentrations than we can.
ReplyDeleteEvery once and a while I stumble across some anecdotal report of ridiculously enhanced senses, drug induced or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI remember in the Olfaction lab meetings someone pointing out that our sense of smell is actually quite good, not quite like a dog's but way better than most people think. One of the differences is that we're not walking around with our noses in the dirt all the time. Attention might also have something to do with it.
Theres probably a lot more we can learn about gating our senses, but these experiments are difficult to conduct in a controlled manner. It seems like the first step is organizing a study to prove that a phenomena exists in the first place ?
"Similarly, it appears that the limits to our threshold of hearing may actually be Brownian motion. That means that we can almost hear the random movements of atoms."
ReplyDeleteBut two seventy-year-old cannot hear each other from opposite ends of the couch. And I've got the bruises to prove it.