The Background - Artificial Human Sensors: Science and Applications - page 16

involves the whole arena of the human perception. We are not able to tune our
senses or close the window to the world. Some perceptual senses are wide open,
even in different degrees of unconsciousness. As a result of the shaping of the
human perceptual senses, and in a degree of attention, we collect and deliver con-
tinuously a huge amount of information, even when we are sleeping. This amount
of continuously received information has some connections and relations to earlier
experiences and momentarily related input data.
Humans often correlate the sensing information with some earlier experienced
situations and create a relationship to earlier episodes in life that is considered to
be of similar interest and where knowledge may be drawn. The impression later
in life, from these specific moments, may focus on some minor details that we
remember clearly and relate to as a strong memory. For example, visiting relatives
in the countryside when I was a child, was always a precious moment at each
summer vacation. The details of how they lived, the surroundings and even how
they looked like has since a long time faded away. But one specific feeling has
remained in my memory and is clearly reviewed each time I recall these moments:
- the smell of the freshly baked buns .
The afternoon coffee time was an event held in the garden, when the weather
allowed it, and from these moments there obviously must have been a mix of
incoming impressions from many perceptual sources. However, the impression
of that specific olfaction sensation, accumulated during many summers when tast-
ing these superb buns and receiving the smell from the buns, has certainly resulted
in a permanent olfaction impression from decades ago. Today, I can still recall the
flavour of the buns when relating my memory to these occasions. When thinking
back to these summer vacations, the amazing feeling of enjoyment can be renewed
in my memory and I can feel the sensation over and over again as illustrated in
Fig. 1.3.
This overwhelming sensational feeling of that specific smell impression has in
some sense faded away with age, even if the feeling in broad outline will remain
in my memory. The olfaction sensation ability is most probably changing during
life and time, and is most likely more sensitive at young ages when we are in an
eager mode to learn and create a knowledge base involving all the new perceptual
impression. When getting older, we have normally built up an impressive “register
of experience” to use and compare similarities with freshly received impressions,
that may compensate for lower olfaction abilities, e.g., aging. For example, when
stating that it smells like old garbage, of course we need to have a clear picture and
earlier experience of how old garbage smells. The brain processes the perceptual
experience from earlier impressions caused by specific events and we are not able
to consciously influence into the process, i.e., we may even not be aware of the pro-
cess. By that means, we have no possibility to control or decide what momentarily
sensing impression will be compared with in the brain. This phenomenon can also
be experienced in persons who exhibit traumatic events. Actually, the perceived
experience some time ago that is influencing present perceptions is indeed a spe-
cific eccentricity that makes a person individually unique and extremely complex,