It’s time to expand our definition of blindness.
Tag Archives: Senses and Sensation
Cold-Plunging With Maine’s ‘Ice Mermaids’
A photographer in Maine has been documenting groups of women who submerge themselves in near-freezing water. Here’s what she’s seen.
Language Evolves Right Before Our Ears. It’s Very ‘Satisfying.’
How pickleball and A.S.M.R. may have helped the youngs refine our language forward.
Silence Brought Me a Community and an Escape
Society maintains that I am broken because of my deafness. I consider myself fortunate to have been given this ability to turn off the sound.
Ecotherapists Are Working to Make the Outdoors More Inclusive
Amid pandemic stress and racial violence, many communities of color have turned to wilderness areas for healing.
How Animals See Themselves
The most familiar of settings can feel newly unfamiliar through the senses of other creatures.
When Covid Took My Sense of Smell
After eight days, I was feeling fully recovered from my rendezvous with Omicron. Then my nose called it quits.
Your Body’s Thirst Messenger Is in an Unexpected Place
Scientists traced how a mouse’s brain gets the signal that it had enough to drink. Something similar may happen in humans.
How I Freed Up Time to Daydream
An unexpected perk of quitting Twitter.
Sometimes, Life Stinks. So He Invented the Nasal Ranger.
For Chuck McGinley, an engineer who devised the go-to instrument for measuring odors, helping people understand what they smell is serious science.
The Eat Well Challenge: A Guide to Reshape Your Eating Habits Without a Diet
Reshape your eating habits this year, no dieting needed.
How to Mindfully Manage Your Food Cravings
For the Eat Well Challenge, mindfulness techniques like “urge surfing” can help curb overeating without banning favorite foods.
How Disgust Explains Everything
For psychologists who study it, disgust is one of the primal emotions that define — and explain — humanity.
Millionaire Space Tourism Doesn’t Come With an Awe Guarantee
Space tourism is one of those ostensibly awesome experiences that often feel anticlimactic because they promise the sublime.
This Part Is the Worst Part
The mother of a non-speaking autistic son yearns to know the answer to one simple question: ‘What is wrong?’
This Halloween, Give Horror a Chance
Dealing with horror on the screen and on the page can help you deal with horror in the real world.
When Covid-19 Stole Their Smell, These Experts Lost Much More
French perfumers, sommeliers and winemakers with coronavirus infections are sometimes deprived of a crucial tool: their high-performing noses.
The Ethereal Taste of Flowers
Attempting to describe the appeal of floral flavors raises a challenging question: What is the relation between taste and smell?
What Does It Look Like When a City Returns to Its Senses?
The reopening of New York has created a banquet of sights, smells, flavors, textures and sounds. The New York Times asked photographers to convey how the city is nourishing each of the senses.
The Struggles of Those Who Regain Sight and Hearing
In “Coming to Our Senses,” Susan R. Barry looks at people who stopped being blind or deaf and then had to adjust to the world.
Why Won’t Anyone Help Me in This Sex Shop?
At 83, and legally blind, I could use some assistance.
Covid Survivors Smell Foods Differently
Long after some people have recovered from the virus, they find certain foods off-putting.
The Forgotten Sense
Regaining what the coronavirus took from you.
Covid Stole Your Sense of Smell? Try Physical Therapy for Your Nose.
Doctors are recommending smell training for patients with lingering olfactory problems.
How Do Blind Worms See the Color Blue?
Eyeless roundworms may have hacked other cellular warning systems to give themselves a form of color vision.
When I Lost My Sense of Taste to Covid, Anorexia Stepped In
With flavor gone, my old eating disorder came roaring back.
What Can Covid-19 Teach Us About the Mysteries of Smell?
The virus’s strangest symptom has opened new doors to understanding our most neglected sense.
Some Covid Survivors Haunted by Loss of Smell and Taste
As the coronavirus claims more victims, a once-rare diagnosis is receiving new attention from scientists, who fear it may affect nutrition and mental health.
This Unusual Bird Superpower Goes Back to the Dinosaur Extinction
Kiwis, ibises and sandpipers share this sensory power with birds that lived millions of years ago.
Pandemic Advice From Athletes
Athletes who have endured the most grueling tests have a lot to tell us about how to thrive in the pandemic.
What in the World Is a $590 Scratch-and-Sniff T-shirt Doing in 2020?
And why is shipping not free?
The Strange Grief of Losing My Sense of Taste
Many symptoms of Covid-19 were difficult, but losing my ability to taste hurt the most.
In an Era of Face Masks, We’re All a Little More Face Blind
Your brain’s powers of facial recognition are going to need some time to get used to the coverings we’re wearing to keep each other healthy.
I’m a Lip Reader in a Masked World
There are ways to accommodate people like me. But if our collective pandemic experience has taught us anything, it’s that small sacrifices to help others are not exactly America’s strong suit.
She Struggled With Asthma, but It Had Never Been This Bad
She had trouble breathing, and the E.R. doctors discovered a mass in her lung. Was this cancer — or something a little more unusual?
The New Language of Telehealth
Telemedicine is teaching us new ways to communicate with our patients.
What Phone Calls Have Given Me That Video Chat Can’t
Just as I’m imagining their environment, their clothes, their gestures, they’re imagining me. We’re making a cocoon where only the two of us live.
Loud, Louder, Loudest: How Classical Music Started to Roar
As the world added decibels, so did orchestras.
What Is Sensory Processing Disorder?
Children who are deemed ‘sensitive’ or ‘picky’ might be struggling with a treatable condition.
One Bright Thing
Need a little lift? Amid the bleakness, 18 Times writers shared moments that lightened their mood.
Some Coronavirus Patients Show Signs of Stroke, Seizures and Confusion
Doctors have observed neurological symptoms, including confusion, stroke and seizures, in a small subset of Covid-19 patients.
Take a Walk in the Woods. Doctor’s Orders.
“Forest bathing,” or immersing yourself in nature, is being embraced by doctors and others as a way to combat stress and improve health.
How to Be Mindful at the Beach
The sound of waves crashing, the salty air and the feel of sand between our toes invite us into the present moment.