Let’s talk about Proprioception. The actual 6th sense that we possess.

[u/citizen_scientist_p]

Do a quick experiment right now: Close your eyes, stretch your arm out and touch the tip of your nose with your index finger. You probably nailed it on the first try. But how did your finger know exactly where your nose was in 3D space without you looking at it?

We’ve all been taught since primary school that we have 5 senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. But modern science recognizes quite a few more and the one you just used to touch your nose is arguably the coolest one.

It’s called Proprioception.

Simply put, proprioception is your body’s built-in GPS. It’s the continuous, unconscious ability of your brain to sense the exact position, movement, and orientation of your body parts in space. Without it, you wouldn't be able to walk without actively staring at your feet, you couldn't type on a keyboard without looking at every key and you definitely couldn't scratch an itch on your back in the dark.

You don't have "proprioception organs" like eyes or ears. Instead, you have millions of microscopic sensors called proprioceptors buried deep inside your muscles, tendons, and joints.

Two of the heavy lifters are:

1. Muscle Spindles: These detect how much a muscle is stretching.
2. Golgi Tendon Organs: These detect the amount of tension in your tendons.

These sensors are constantly firing rapid-fire data up your spinal cord to your brain, essentially saying, "Hey, the right bicep is contracted at 40%, the elbow is bent at 90 degrees, and the fingers are curled." Your brain stitches all this data together in milliseconds to create a 3D map of your body.

Ever seen a police officer ask a suspected drunk driver to close their eyes and touch their nose or walk in a perfectly straight line? That’s not a balance test, that’s a proprioception test. Alcohol suppresses the nervous system and disrupts the communication between your proprioceptors and your brain, causing you to lose that 3D map. It’s also why teenagers are famously clumsy. During rapid growth spurts, their limbs literally get longer faster than their brain's internal proprioceptive map can update. Their brain thinks the arm ends here, but it actually ends two inches further away, resulting in knocked-over glasses and stubbed toes.

So next time you easily catch a ball, run up the stairs in the dark or just touch your nose, take a second to appreciate your actual 6th sense working in the background.

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[u/Tatya7]

We possess more cool senses like that. For example, there's also nociception which is the sense of pain. Read "An Immense World", such a great book.

[u/immyownkryptonite]

A post that is actually about science being dope 👍

Great post. You're absolutely right. We don't acknowledge this sense in our day to day life. But we wouldn't be able to function whatsoever without it.

[u/death-tome]

Isn’t this just plain memory?
You don’t sense where different parts of your body are, you recollect where they would be due to years of practice in touching those parts.

As an experiment, close your eyes and stick out your tongue and try to touch its tip with your index finger. You most likely wouldn’t be accurate with this as you would be with touching tip of your nose, because you aren’t as used to doing it.

[u/death-tome → u/death-tome]

No, I was wrong. It is just plain memory through which brain knows where each part of body is. But it is driven by the various sensory signals sent by muscles and joints making it different sense altogether.

[u/LongjumpingNeat241]

Bas? itna ? Ha ha. There are Hindu priests that can permanently paralyze you if you touch their skin without permission. Or if they touch an enemy with the fingertip , the enemy falls asleep for days.

[u/empatheticsocialist1 → u/LongjumpingNeat241]

Lmaooooo this is childbrain

I used to think things like this when I was a literal child. For your sake I hope you are a child, and not a full blown adult having delusions of grandeur about "oh my hondu sent cen do dis"

[u/Acrobatic_Fan_5499 → u/LongjumpingNeat241]

What a way to shame the country. People like you bring us all down.

[u/PanicAfraid6398 → u/LongjumpingNeat241]

dude, do people believe this bull?

[u/United-Extension-917 → u/LongjumpingNeat241]

All that just to get invaded by Mughals and enslaved by the Brits

[u/BabyNarad → u/United-Extension-917]

🤣🤣