"Why is boring information harder to remember?" Scientists have counted as many as seven human senses

We were taught that there are five basic senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. All of them are extrinsic because their source is receptors located on the surface of the body. However, it turned out that our brain interacts with the rest of the body in a much more complex way than previously thought. And we have not five senses, but seven.

In an interview with the Spanish BBC, physicist and neuroscientist Nazareth Castellanos said that memory, attention, and mood depend on body posture and facial expressions, the state of the intestinal microbiota and stomach, as well as heartbeat and breathing. When reading boring information, a person most often hunches over and lowers his or her head. Thus, they send a signal to the brain that they are not interested.

"Our brain interacts with other parts of the body in a much more complex way than we used to think. If I have a frown on my face, the brain interprets it as anger and, accordingly, activates the mechanisms of anger. It's the same with posture: when I'm hunched over, my brain turns on neural mechanisms that are characteristic of sadness," explains Castellanos.

Why is posture important and how does it affect the brain?

Until now, science has been more interested in studying the human connection to the outside world. Therefore, the five main exteroceptive senses have been considered. However, there is also interoception, or the body's ability to sense and understand internal signals, such as hunger, thirst, heartbeat, and even emotions. The brain receives this information from internal organs: the heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, etc. This is how it learns what is happening inside the body. Therefore, this is the number one sense, the priority.

The second most important sense is proprioception, or the sensation of the body in space: postures, gestures, movements. The brain receives this data from joints, tendons, and muscles.

For example, when we are nervous, we feel a heaviness in our stomach or a lump in our throat. And when we are tired, we feel discomfort in our eyes.

The somatosensory cortex is responsible for movement and gestures. When its work was first analyzed in 1952, it was discovered that the brain favors some parts of the body over others. For example, the back, despite its considerable size, receives much fewer neurons than the little finger.

German scientists conducted an experiment in which they took several people, put a laptop at eye level, and displayed a series of words on the screen that had to be read. In the second variant, the computer was on the floor so that to read the words, there was no other choice but to bend over, lower your head, and hunch over. After a while, the participants were asked to recall the words they had read. Those who were hunched over remembered fewer words in general and more words with negative meanings. In other words, the brain interprets posture to conclude our state, and changing our posture can help change the situation.

How do facial expressions affect the brain?

The brain attaches great importance to what is happening on the face. That is, people who frown activate the amygdala, which is the main nucleus for controlling emotions and feelings in the brain. And if a stressful situation arises, they react more excitedly because this area of the brain is already prepared.

To learn how our body works, we need to learn to observe it. Research shows that most people have a low level of body awareness. Therefore, scientists advise observing your bodily reactions throughout the day. And when an emotion appears, stop for a moment and ask yourself: "Where is it?" In other words, you need to be more attentive to your body, which will allow you to better understand its needs and signals.

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