Trapped in front of our screens all day, we often ignore our senses beyond sound and sight. And yet they are always at work. If we are more alert, we will feel the rough and smooth surfaces of things, the hardness of our shoulders, and the softness of bread.

In the morning, we may hear the swish of the toothpaste, feel and feel the running water in the shower, smell the shampoo, and later, the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

Aristotle tells us that there is five senses. But he also tells us that the world was created of the five elements, and we don’t believe that anymore. And modern research shows that we have many feelings.

Almost all of our experiences is multisensory. We cannot see, hear, smell, and touch other parcels. It simultaneously occurs in a unified experience of the world around us and ourselves. How we feel affects what we seeand what we see affects what we hear. Different shampoo scents affect how you look at the texture of the hair. The scent of roses makes hair seem silkier, for example.

The flavor of low-fat yogurts makes them feel richer and thicker on the palate without added emulsifiers. Perception of smells in the mouthwhich goes up the nasal passage, is changed by the viscosity of the liquids we eat.

My long-time colleague, professor Charles Spence from the Crossmodal Laboratory at Oxford, told me of his colleagues in neuroscience believe that there is anywhere between 22 and 33 feelings. This includes proprioceptionwhich enables us to know where our arms are without looking at them. Our sense of balance takes over vestibular system in the ear canals as well as vision and proprioception.

Another example is interoception, where we notice changes in our own bodies, such as a slight increase in our heart rate and hunger. We also have a sense of agency when moving our arms: a sense that can be lost in stroke patients who sometimes even believe that someone else is moving their arm.

There is the sense of ownership. Stroke patients sometimes feel their, for example, arm is not theirs even though they can still feel it.

Some of the traditional senses are combinations of several senses. Touch, for example, includes pain, temperature, itch, and tactile sensations. When we can taste we actually experience a combination of three senses: touch, smell, and taste—or gustation—that combine to create the flavors we find in food and drink.

Gustation consists of the sensations produced by the receptors of the tongue that enable us to identify salt, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami (tasty). What about mint, mango, melon, strawberry, and raspberry? We don’t have raspberry receptors on the tongue, nor is raspberry flavor a combination of sweet, sour, and bitter. There is no flavor arithmetic for fruit flavors. We can understand them by joint working in the tongue and nose. It stinks which contributes the lion’s share of what we call taste.

However, it does not remove odors from the environment. Odor compounds are released as we chew or inhale, traveling from the mouth to the nose through the nasal pharynx at the back of the throat. Touch also plays a partcombining flavors and aromas and satisfying our preferences for runny or firm eggs and the velvety, luxurious gooeyness of chocolate.

Vision is influenced by our vestibular system. If you’re on a ground plane, look at the cabin. Look again when you are on the climb. It will “look” at you as if the front of the cabin is higher than you, although optically, everything has the same relationship to you as it does to the ground. What you “see” is the combined effect of vision and your ear canals telling you that you are leaning backwards.

The senses offer much research, and philosophers, neuroscientists, and psychologists collaborate in the Center for the Study of the Senses at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study.

In 2013, the center launched the Rethinking the Senses project, directed by my colleague, the late Professor Sir Colin Blakemore. We discovered how changing the sound of your own footsteps can make your body feel lighter or heavier.

We know how the audioguides at the Tate Britain art museum speak to the listener as the model of a picture speaks enabling visitors to remember many visual details of the painting. We discover how airplane noise disrupts our perception of taste and why you should always drink tomato juice on airplanes.

While our perception of salt, sweet, and sour decreases in the presence of white noise, umami does not, and tomatoes and tomato juice do. rich in umami. This means that the noise of the aircraft is taste-enhancing the taste.

In our latest interactive exhibition, Opened feelings at the Coal Drops Yard in London’s King’s Cross, people can discover for themselves how their senses work and why they don’t work the way we think they do.

For example, the illusion of weight size is illustrated by a set of small, medium, and large curling stones. People can lift each one and decide which one is the heaviest. The smallest will feel the heaviest, but people can immediately put them on the balance scales and know that they all weigh the same.

But there are always plenty of things around you to show how complex your senses are, if you just stop for a moment to take it all in. So the next time you walk outside or eat a meal, take a moment to appreciate how your senses work together to help you feel all the sensations involved.

Barry SmithDirector of the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London. This article was reprinted from The Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read the original article.