Human Senses (2003) BBC

Part 2: Hearing and Balance

Hearing

Sound can have a very powerful effect on how we feel about the world.This episode embarks on a quest to track down the sounds which have the most powerful emotional effects on us, and to understand why. Our sense of hearing is the one sense that never sleeps. It evolved to protect us from ambush at night. At the Sleep Laboratory in Swansea, Dr Mark Blagrove plays sounds to sleeping volunteers and finds that although they can shut out sounds when asleep, their sense of hearing is constantly alert. Another sound we respond to strongly is the human voice. Dr Sarah Collins, a behavioural expert at Nottingham University, studies the effect sexy voices have on people and explains why deep voices are so attractive to the opposite sex.

But sounds are far more than just sex and danger. Music has extraordinary power to manipulate our emotions and the most basic feature of all music is rhythm. Scientists believe we have certain automatic responses to rhythmic sounds, because many of our basic body processes work to a beat – the heart pumping or the legs and arms moving as we walk. We travel to Hawaii to meet an animal which might help unravel why music has such a powerful effect on us. Once a year, hundreds of humpback whales meet up to sing their hearts out.We discover that the mating male whales sing because it's the best way to convey simple emotions to other males like 'back off' or ‘you're my friend'. And for us music is all about conveying emotions. In search of the ultimate high, there may be another even more powerful way that sounds can affect us.

Back in England, we observe enthusiastic Status Quo fans who are clearly entranced by the very loud music, and discovers why it may be the volume of the music rather than the timeless Status Quo songs that really gets the audience going.



Balance

Balance is our true sixth sense; it enables us to sense how our bodies are moving around in the world and keep us upright. There are only two kinds of animal that spend their whole lives performing the tricky balancing act of walking on two legs – humans and some flightless birds, like ostriches. Balancing can be a deceptively complex business. Stunt co-ordinator Marc Cass takes us for a dramatic drive, to demonstrate how the balance organs let us know how we're being yanked around, and even turned upside down. For really fine balance, we need our eyes to help us work out exactly what the body is doing in relation to the outside world.

A troupe of acrobats at the Circus School in San Francisco, illustrate this when they perform a human tower with the lights off. We reveal why spinning round in circles  makes you dizzy and, under the guidance of Dr Ros Davies from theNational Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, discover why drinking alcohol makes it hard to walk in a straight line. Our sense of balance is so complex that even if all three components are working fine – the balance organs, the feedback from our limbs, and our eyes – if there there's any disagreement about what's going on, the result can be

unpleasant. Dr Frank Golden of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) explains that sea sickness is caused when the central nervous system receives conflicting messages from the three systems.

The ultimate test for our sense of balance is a trip into space – or even worse, a trip on board the infamous Russian Vomit Comet – a ride so unpleasant that first timers can sometimes end up in hospital on a drip, from excessive vomiting. It's the ultimate triumph of the human senses – to survive in a situation which no animal was ever designed for.

Source: http://www.bbcactive.com/BroadcastLearning/MediaSupportFiles/Human%20Senses%20synopsis.pdf

This sensory romp around the globe goes in search of the biological roots of our senses to uncover the reasons why particular sights, sounds, smells and tastes have such powerful effects on us. How do we manage to block out intense pain? How does our sense of balance keep working under the most extreme conditions? Live action combined with special effects creates incredible imagery to convey the 'feeling' of how our senses work. As an alarm bell goes off, we 'see' the noise, slowed down thousands of times. Ripples of sound roll towards us; we spin around and follow a sound wave as it travels into the dark outer ear canal.



The senses are our guide to the world, keeping us out of danger and directing us to pleasure. But how sensitive and accurate are they? And Just how intense a sensation can we bear? On a global assault course for the senses, our chief volunteer must endure many a sensory extreme - from the foulest smell to the hottest chilli pepper, while other, unsuspecting "volunteers" will unwittingly demonstrate just how easily our senses can be misled. We will also meet the sensory superstar of the animal kingdom, who can help to explain the biological roots of our own senses.





Are your eyes being tricked by your brain? Do you know what a supertaster is? Or how to avoid travel sickness? Put your senses to the test in our Senses Challenge.



Discover why food tastes bland if you can't smell.



The light hearted but revealing series explores, sense by sense, how they function and why we need them. Then delves so deep... you'll never hear, taste, touch, smell, stand, or see the same way again.

[edit] Smell and Taste



In the first programme of the series Nigel Marven goes in search of the most disgusting , the most attractive smells and sets out to discover the biological reasons why humans eat such a diverse range of foods, from rotten raw ducks eggs to a sweaty blue cheese. At a chilli eating contest, he pushes his taste buds to the limit.

[edit] Hearing and Balance



Sound can have a very powerful effect on how we feel about the world and Nigel Marven is on a quest to track down the sounds which have the most powerful emotional effects on us.Balance is our true sixth sense - it enables us to sense how our bodies are moving around in the world and keep us upright. There are only two kinds of animal that spend their whole lives performing the tricky balancing act of walking on two legs – humans and some flightless birds, like ostriches.

[edit] Touch and Vision



Humans are very sensitive to touch, but different parts of our body have different sensitivities. Nigel demonstrates that when it comes to our sense of touch, humans are similar to elephants.Nigel Marven sets out to discover why we are excellent at seeing some things, but sometimes miss what's right in front of our eyes.