Level: practical ·Topic: neurogenetics of perception, sensory processing,HSP
A sensory profile is the individual pattern of your sensory organ sensitivity and the way your brain processes information.It is shaped by genetics, epigenetics, and early experience.Understanding your sensory profile helps explain why you react sharply to things others don't notice — or, conversely, don't feel what seems obvious to everyone else.
Dimension 1.Vision
Colour perception
The standardIshihara test for colour blindness detects disruptions in red-green perception.But there are subtler differences that fall outside any diagnosis:
- High colour discrimination: some people distinguish far more shades within a single colour.Tetrachromats are the extreme case, but sensitivity varies among ordinary trichromats as well.
- OPN1LW (L-opsin): variants of this gene shift the peak sensitivity of the 'red' cone toward shorter or longer wavelengths.This means two people can see the same shade of orange slightly differently — even with 'normal' colour vision.
How to test: TheCambridgeColourTest and theFarnsworth-Munsell 100HueTest (both available online) give a quantitative assessment of colour discrimination.They detect not colour blindness, but shade-distinction precision.
Contrast and motion sensitivity
ThePRSS56 gene influences eye size and, indirectly, visual acuity.Variants of genes encoding vitreous body and lens proteins (MYP genes) are linked to myopia — the most common refractive error in the world, whose prevalence has risen sharply over the past 50 years alongside the spread of near-work activities.
- A practical takeaway: if several generations of your family have myopia, the probability of a hereditary predisposition is high.For children during the visual formation period (ages 6–14), regular outdoor time (at least 2 hours a day) reliably reduces myopia progression — regardless of genetics.
Dimension 2.Hearing
High-frequency sensitivity
With age, hearing loses sensitivity to high frequencies — this is presbycusis, and it is largely genetically determined.KCNQ4,GJB2,CDH23 are among the best-studied genetic factors in age-related hearing loss.
- GJB2 (connexin 26): mutations in this gene are the most common cause of congenital non-syndromic hearing loss in children.Carrier status for one copy (without disease manifestation) occurs in approximately 2–3% of theEuropean population.
- A practical takeaway: if you notice difficulty hearing high frequencies (women's voices, birds, consonants in noisy settings) before the age of 50, it is worth getting a hearing test and discussing family history with a physician.
Musicality and rhythm
TheAVPR1A gene (the vasopressin receptor we met inEpisode 8) has been associated in research with musicality and rhythm perception.Its long variant correlates with higher scores on auditory memory and rhythm reproduction tests.Researchers at theUniversity ofHelsinki (Ukkola-Vuoti et al., 2013) found this association in a sample of 767 individuals fromFinnish musical families.
Dimension 3.Smell
The human olfactory genome is one of the largest in terms of gene count: more than 400 functional olfactory receptor genes (OR genes).About 60% of the average person'sOR genes are pseudogenes (non-functional copies).The variation in the set of activeOR genes between people is enormous.
- Androstenone: a steroid present in male sweat.About 30–40% of people cannot detect it at all (androstenone anosmia), roughly 15% perceive it as 'pleasant,' and around 35% as 'unpleasant' or 'urine-like.'This depends on variants of theOR7D4 gene.
- Isovaleric acid: a component of 'foot odour.'Nearly everyone can detect it, but intensity of perception varies by a factor of ~1,000 between individuals — depending onOR gene variants.
A practical takeaway: If certain smells seem much stronger or weaker to you than to others — they probably are.Olfactory profiles are individual and largely genetically determined.This also explains why perfume perception is so subjective: the same fragrance 'sounds' differently on different people not only because of skin chemistry, but because of different olfactory receptor repertoires.
Dimension 4.Touch andPainThreshold
Pain threshold is one of the most genetically variable human characteristics.Key genes:
- TRPV1: our familiar capsaicin receptor.Its variants affect the intensity of thermal pain and spice perception.
- SCN9A: the sodium channelNav1.7.Loss-of-function mutations cause congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) — a rare condition in which a person feels no pain at all.Gain-of-function mutations cause erythromelalgia, in which pain from heat is unbearable.These extreme cases illustrate how fundamental this gene is to pain perception.
- COMTVal158Met: familiar fromEpisode 3.The 'slow'COMT (Met/Met) is associated with a lower pain threshold in women across several clinical studies.
Tactile sensitivity andHSP
If you identify as a 'highly sensitive person' — cannot tolerate clothing labels, react intensely to noise or crowds, need more time to recover from intense experiences — this is not a character weakness.It is a neurobiological fact.
Key practical takeaways forHSPs:
- Environment matters more than willpower. Reducing sensory load in your work space is not a preference — it is a productivity requirement.
- Recovery is not a luxury. HSPs spend more neural resources processing sensory experience.They need more time in solitude and quiet — this is a physiological fact, not introversion.
- An advantage in the right context. HSPs are better at noticing details, errors, and nuances — a resource in professions requiring precision and empathy.
How toMapYourSensoryProfile
- TakeElaineAron'sHSP test (available free at hsperson.com).It gives a baseline assessment of sensory sensitivity.
- Farnsworth-Munsell 100HueTest online — for colour discrimination assessment.
- Check your hearing with an online audiogram (hearingtest.online or similar) — a basic assessment of frequency range.
- In yourDNA test, look for: rs8065080 (TRPV1), rs4680 (COMTVal158Met), rs6311 (5-HT2A — the serotonin receptor associated with sensory information processing).
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