The question of how we sense the environment around us has fascinated humans for centuries. The first attempts at a theoretical understanding of the senses were discovered in the writings of early Greek thinkers in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. However, the gap between our theories and our understanding of how our senses work is continuing to shrink. This year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Dr. David Julius and Dr. Ardem Patapoutian, two scientists who independently discovered mechanisms of how we sense temperature and touch…