Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-280) and index (pages 281-298)

Preface -- Acknowledgments -- The brainless majority: sensing the environment in organisms without brains -- Brains and prains: brains (or not) in animals from sponges to us -- The monkey's unculus: tactile and balance sensory capacity in animals -- A matter of taste (and odorant) receptors: smell and taste reception in animals -- All ears (and eyes): animal hearing and sight -- Supersmellers and supertasters: the limits of smell and taste in humans -- Where am I? Touch and how it is linked to other senses -- The eyes have it: the limits of sight in humans -- Accidents will happen: traumatic brain injury and the impact on our senses -- Modern life, strokes, and the senses: the impact of strokes and other brain damage on sensory capacity -- Full/half/split brains: people with unique brains -- Team of rivals meets the Kluge: making sense out of crossmodal stimuli from the outer world -- Neural detritus: making sense out of a noisy environment -- Pani ca' Meusa, crème brûlée, and synesthesia: crossmodal impact on taste and synesthesia -- Connectomes: how crossmodal interactions work in the brain -- Faces and hallucinations: facial recognition and hallucinations as subjects in higher perception -- Bob Dylan's Nobel: language, literacy, and how the senses interact to produce literature -- Facing the music: the neurobiology of music and art -- No limits: the limits to what we can sense and the future of our senses -- Literature and further reading -- Index

Over the past decade neuroscience has uncovered a wealth of new information about our senses and how they serve as our gateway to the world. This splendidly accessible book explores the most intriguing findings of this research. With infectious enthusiasm, Rob DeSalle illuminates not only how we see, hear, smell, touch, taste, maintain balance, feel pain, and rely on other less familiar senses but also how these senses shape our perception of the world aesthetically, artistically, and musically. The author first examines the question of how perception and consciousness are formed in the brain, setting human senses in an evolutionary context. He then investigates such varied themes as supersenses and diminished senses, synesthesia and other cross-sensory phenomena, hemispheric specialization, diseases, anomalies induced by brain injuries, and hallucinations. Focusing on what is revealed about our senses through the extraordinary, he provides unparalleled insights into the unique wonders of the human brain