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Extra sensory input is an amazing concept. On thursday we learned that we acquire information without even being aware of it. Just as proprioceptors, without our conscious knowledge, receive and process information about the states of our muscles and tendons to manage movement, we receive information from objects around us and our nervous system manages it without our consciously deciding what to "see" and what not to. We illustrated this with the blind spot experiment. The blind spot on our retina is supposed to produce a black spot in the images we perceive, but the nervous system creates an image for us. The nervous system basically invents an image which it believes would normally be there. It is capable of making us perceive images differently than what they really are! This is an interesting and a little scary concept. (Crazy people are not alone, apparently we ALL invent images and see things that aren't really there.)

This got me thinking. What if we have blind spots in all of our extra sensory perceptions? Is our nervous system filling in other black areas in, say taste? or smell? Could we be tasting and smelling things that are not present? Perhaps the universal filler of the taste "blind spot" is the taste of chicken.