Oct 10, 2025 05:32 PM
(This post was last modified: Oct 10, 2025 05:34 PM by C C.)
https://thedebrief.org/forget-the-sixth-...ven-senses
EXCERPTS: For over a century, neuroscientists have searched for the physical trace of memory, the elusive “engram,” or neural pattern believed to encode experiences in the brain. Now, researchers may have uncovered something even more intriguing: a mathematical reason why human perception and memory seem tuned to a particular limit.
In a new study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from King’s College London, Loughborough University, and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology have developed a theoretical model showing that the brain’s ability to form and retain memories might depend on the dimensionality of the sensory world it perceives.
[...] In essence, if every sense corresponds to a new dimension in perception, then there appears to be a natural limit -- seven -- beyond which the brain’s ability to store distinct concepts begins to drop off.
[...] Humans are traditionally thought to have five senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—but neuroscience now recognizes a few more, including proprioception, our awareness of body position, and equilibrioception, the sense of balance.
The idea that cognition might peak around seven inputs isn’t entirely new. Psychologist Dr. George A. Miller famously proposed in 1956 that the average human can hold about “seven, plus or minus two” pieces of information in working memory at once. This new model offers a potential physical and mathematical rationale behind that long-observed cognitive limit.
According to researchers, the balance between sensitivity and precision, as well as the trade-off between being open to new experiences and preserving sharp, distinct memories, may reflect a universal principle. Systems that are highly receptive to new information tend to form blurred, overlapping memories. In contrast, systems that are overly selective risk missing new experiences altogether.
“The higher the receptivity, the less sharp the learned concept becomes,” the researchers note, comparing this tension to the bias-variance trade-off in machine learning, where systems must balance generalization against overfitting.
In biological terms, the finding suggests that evolution may have “tuned” human sensory capacity to the sweet spot where perception, learning, and memory remain maximally efficient. Adding more senses, or sensory dimensions, might not necessarily improve cognition but could instead overload the brain’s conceptual space, causing interference between memories.
[...] Ultimately, the study offers a tantalizing perspective: that the architecture of human perception—the way we see, hear, feel, and balance—may not just be a product of biology, but a reflection of deep mathematical laws governing how systems remember... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: For over a century, neuroscientists have searched for the physical trace of memory, the elusive “engram,” or neural pattern believed to encode experiences in the brain. Now, researchers may have uncovered something even more intriguing: a mathematical reason why human perception and memory seem tuned to a particular limit.
In a new study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from King’s College London, Loughborough University, and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology have developed a theoretical model showing that the brain’s ability to form and retain memories might depend on the dimensionality of the sensory world it perceives.
[...] In essence, if every sense corresponds to a new dimension in perception, then there appears to be a natural limit -- seven -- beyond which the brain’s ability to store distinct concepts begins to drop off.
[...] Humans are traditionally thought to have five senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—but neuroscience now recognizes a few more, including proprioception, our awareness of body position, and equilibrioception, the sense of balance.
The idea that cognition might peak around seven inputs isn’t entirely new. Psychologist Dr. George A. Miller famously proposed in 1956 that the average human can hold about “seven, plus or minus two” pieces of information in working memory at once. This new model offers a potential physical and mathematical rationale behind that long-observed cognitive limit.
According to researchers, the balance between sensitivity and precision, as well as the trade-off between being open to new experiences and preserving sharp, distinct memories, may reflect a universal principle. Systems that are highly receptive to new information tend to form blurred, overlapping memories. In contrast, systems that are overly selective risk missing new experiences altogether.
“The higher the receptivity, the less sharp the learned concept becomes,” the researchers note, comparing this tension to the bias-variance trade-off in machine learning, where systems must balance generalization against overfitting.
In biological terms, the finding suggests that evolution may have “tuned” human sensory capacity to the sweet spot where perception, learning, and memory remain maximally efficient. Adding more senses, or sensory dimensions, might not necessarily improve cognition but could instead overload the brain’s conceptual space, causing interference between memories.
[...] Ultimately, the study offers a tantalizing perspective: that the architecture of human perception—the way we see, hear, feel, and balance—may not just be a product of biology, but a reflection of deep mathematical laws governing how systems remember... (MORE - missing details)
