Sensory

Some people feel that their food isn't quite tasty enough unless it had added salt, sugar or MSG. The SpoonTEK spoon offers a healthier alternative, as it reportedly boosts the perceived flavor of foods by harmlessly zapping its user's tastebuds.

Using their sonar system, toothed whales are able to zero in on prey in the pitch black conditions of the deep sea. Seals lack such a system, but still catch prey in the same conditions. New research now shows how their whiskers allow them to do so.

A study found pupils respond in the same way to the number of objects in one’s field of vision as they do to light. Experiments revealed pupils dilate in response to images with more dots, indicating sensing numbers is an innate perceptual mechanism.

Our brains are extremely fast at recognizing the faces of people important to us. Now, a new study has identified a previously unknown population of brain cells that may be hybrids of sensory and memory neurons, which enable this quick recall.

For some time now, we've been hearing about prosthetic limbs that are designed to work with amputees' bodies. MIT researchers are taking a different approach, though, with a new type of amputation that facilitates the use of prostheses.

Researchers in Australia have succeeded in developing an artificial skin that responds to painful stimuli, heat and pressure like real skin does, which they see as an important step towards intelligent machines and prosthetics.

It is well known that dogs boast an incredible sense of smell, but new research has uncovered another way our four-legged friends use their famous noses to find their way around, detecting radiant heat much like a thermal infrared sensor.

Magnetoreception, or the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field, pops up throughout the animal kingdom, but it’s generally thought to be something humans missed out on. But new research has found changes in human brain wave activity that seems to be in response to a changing magnetic field.

A collaboration working under the EU-funded DeTOP project has developed a new hand prosthesis that reads signals direct from an amputee's nerves and muscles via electrodes implanted in the patient's arm.

Researchers at Caltech have revealed two illusions illustrating how our brain can be tricked into seeing something that isn’t really there. The phenomenon is known as postdiction, and highlights how our perception of reality is actually constructed by our brain retroactively.

A new study has proposed a novel strategy to help autistic individuals improve their ability to process visual information. Mice, engineered with autistic characteristics, were genetically altered to improve their visual and sensory learning abilities.

A new study is suggesting that a simple at-home test, administered through a laptop or smartphone, could accurately diagnose cases of mild cognitive impairment, allowing for early interventions to help prevent further cognitive decline.