Quantum
HEALTH
or understanding the ‘perception’ of what things are made of or come from can directly affect our taste.
Hearing and Sound Perception In January 2007 as part of a social experiment on perception the Washington Post organised an occasion for the world class violinist Joshua Bell and his $3.5 million Stradivarius to busque incognito at the Metro Station. Bell performed six Bach pieces within an hour; during that time approximately two thousand people went through the station, only six people stopped and briefly listened. By the end of the hour Joshua Bell received a total of $32. As soon as he finished playing, silence took over. No one noticed. There was no applause, nor any recognition. Two days prior Joshua Bell had sold out a theater in Boston where seats averaged $100 each. Some of the questions raised from this experiment have been ‘In a common place at an inappropriate hour, do our perceptions of beauty change?’ and more poignantly ‘If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing one of the most remarkable music pieces ever written, how many other things are we missing?’
Touch We use information from the sense of touch to tell us about the world around us – this is known as haptic perception. Haptic perception assimilates sensory information from touch, which cannot just be gathered from looking at an object (like temperature, texture and weight) and from* proprioception, which provides us with spatial and motor information.
Smell Findings conclude that our emotions can directly affect the way we perceive our sense of smell: ‘Our olfactory receptors are directly connected to the limbic system, the most ancient and primitive part of the brain, which is thought to be the seat of emotion... In surveys on reactions to odours, Quantum Health 41