I Went Sensory Speed Dating in Brooklyn and Fed a Man a Banana
I spent this past Saturday night blindfolded in a room full of eager strangers, learning about my dynamic unconscious. Over the course of the evening I cycled through five potential mates, one for each of my senses. About 40 of us were gathered in the basement of the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. We were there for a night of Sensory Speed Dating organized by Guerilla Science, a London- and New York-based group that creates pop-up science events and installations. In between rounds of touching and tasting, we learned science from Heather Berlin, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and host of the Discovery Channel series Superhuman Showdown. "Much of our behavior is guided by sensory processing happening outside of our awareness. Your brain is making decisions all the time, you become aware of it after the fact, and then you kind of make these post-hoc explanations for your behavior," she said.
-Heather Berlin, PhD, Assistant Professor, Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
