thermal grill illusion

I had the most fantastic run today. Admittedly, it started off almost not being a run at all. I awoke this morning to find my sister hogging the bathroom, so instead of departing normally at 5:25 AM I had to wait till about 5:50 AM till I could brush my teeth and mouthwash before heading out.

I took an abnormal route today to just shave off a few minutes since it's cutting it a little close to when I leave for school. This took me on a little bit of a windy and hilly course, which was sorely needed to combat the boredom of a straight course (thanks for the tip Ellis!). Whether it was the change of scenery or just the desperation of finishing ahead of schedule, I managed to pick up both my leg rate and my stride length to pretty much racing strides. The best part was that I felt really comfortable with adjusting between my regular pace and the race pace, so that when I started to get a little tired I'd just drop it back a little bit. With the help of some Coheed & Cambria, my last 800m was a solid sprint to the finish, after which I took off my earphones and yelled, "AWESOME!"

All in all, a good morning.

***

Now onto the thermal grill illusion. I had the fallacy of believing that our cutaneous receptors have a single fiber for sensing temperatures. This is incorrect. We actually have two separate types of receptors embedded, one that interprets cold and the other that interprets hot.

In what is known as the thermal grill illusion, you wrap two sets of tubes around each other to form a spiral rod. One set of tubes has warm water coursing through, while the other has cold water. You touch each tube separates and feel their respective heats. Now when you grab them both in your hand at the same time, you receive the illusion of a scalding hot rod.

The sensation/perception (I know, it blurs the lines) of burning heat has been studied and activates both the cold and the hot fibers in your hands, oddly enough - a finding first explored by Thunberg. I had the fun time of coming into the house this morning with freezing hands (cold fibers well activated) and taking a warm shower (hot fibers activated) and having my hands believe the water was meltingly hot (while my body believed it was rather lukewarm).

It's incredible what our mind interprets, and how much error there actually can be. Our sensorium is extremely gifted at taking what is from the environment and creating an interpretation. At the same time, it's also pretty good at lying to us (ie. how we don't notice our eye saccades).