-domi- t1_izr3h6j wrote
Reply to comment by zipykido in Molecular markers of cells involved in the sixth sense — proprioception, the unconscious sense of body position and movement by marketrent
That involves touch, and conscious motion, that's easy. Ask me to tell you what direction my toes are pointed as i sit here now, and haven't moved my foot consciously in minutes, and be prepared to get a +/- 45° orientation. :D
throwaway901617 t1_izr8mdr wrote
No it only involves touch once your finger reaches your hand.
The sense of touch is not "reach out and touch someone" it's the sensation you feel when someone touches you.
When you reach out to touch your hand without looking the only way that happens is through your body's innate way of detecting the position of your body and all your limbs in 3D space and coordinating the work of many muscles to make that action occur.
That's the sixth sense of proprioception.
-domi- t1_izra6gj wrote
I don't think you're understanding what i'm saying. I'm not suggesting there isn't such a thing as proprioception. What i'm saying is that to me, i infer more about my the positions of my limbs from how they touch my other limbs, or my body, than i do from intuitively knowing. Of course there's feedback loops for moving your limbs - no question. That's what makes it easy to know where my limbs are, actually. When i consciously move something somewhere, i might remember where it was. But if i had to tell you right now whether my foot is toed in or out right now, i'd be guessing. I didn't consciously leave my right foot in any particular orientation, and while proprioception should tell me what its alignment is, i'd literally need to look at it or move it to tell you for certain which direction it's pointed.
desecratethealtreich t1_izrdrb3 wrote
But when you go to start moving it, it will instinctively align in the right direction to accommodate without you having to look down and go “ok right foot, rotate 18 degrees to the left before moving.”
This isn’t about your conscious knowledge, it’s about your innate subconscious ability to move relatively accurately through space without having to be explicitly aware of where they are and how they’re oriented. If you didn’t have this 6th sense, it would take multiple attempts and/or visual tracking to do something like closing your eyes and touching your nose with your index finger.
Regardless of how you consciously infer limb position, your body generally know where things are and how to move about.
-domi- t1_izrhmrr wrote
Yeah, I've acknowledged the feedback loop in every comment in this thread.
Nearatree t1_izrg7l7 wrote
How are you typing this?
-domi- t1_izrhhd3 wrote
By consciously manipulating my limbs, I've said as much.
throwaway901617 t1_iztqug1 wrote
Not true, you are consciously thinking "type these words" but your unconscious mind coordinates all the various tendon movements needed to actually make the typing happen.
Your conscious mind is delegating the vast majority of the work to the unconscious mind which uses proprioception heavily to carry out the task.
HerestheRules t1_izredsd wrote
All of our senses play a big part in the unconscious absorption of the world around us. As with the rest of the senses, each one is connected with many of the others (taste, for example, is a combination of smell and touch, but is also influenced by both sight and sound). Proprioception is intuitively tied to touch, and without touch, the sense is lost.
Think about when you're laying in a recliner. You might cross your legs, or move your arms behind your head, or so on. But no matter what position you're in, the moment you move, your brain already knows where the individual parts need to go without having to input anything. That, specifically, is what proprioception does for us.
Our brains are wired to interpret this information at nearly all times, regardless of whether we're aware of it. I mean, people have actual taste buds on our assholes, but we don't taste it every time we go number 2.
TL;DR:
Our senses are all connected to each other*
^^^* ^^^see ^^^paragraph ^^^1
-domi- t1_izrhlly wrote
Yeah, and like i said - my sixth sense is somewhat stinted, i don't think you've misread what i wrote.
HerestheRules t1_izri2o8 wrote
Well, as a bacterial meningitis survivor, my legs have a lot of nerve damage. I have trouble with this sense in them and I never could tell the difference between touch and spatial awareness like I can now. When too idle, it sometimes feels like my legs are asleep. It's an odd feeling to lose a sense you don't even know you have
It's a total game changer, imo
throwaway901617 t1_iztqgz4 wrote
Proprioception isn't about communicating to your conscious mind where your foot is positioned. It's about your cerebellum and CNS working together to coordinate your foot position so it stabilizes you in your current situation without having to consciously think about it.
It's not about you being able to always know where it is but rather trusting that it is keeping you from falling and that you can quickly put it into another position without having to think about it at all.
-domi- t1_izvno2x wrote
So, how is it a sense, then?
JaggedMetalOs t1_izragg7 wrote
> That involves touch, and conscious motion, that's easy
That's actually not easy! You know if you lie on your arm funny and it goes numb, and you're super clumsy moving it around? That's because you've lost your proprioception.
-domi- t1_izrcdpr wrote
Yeah, yeah, and it all presupposes a functioning GI tract, and that's even more complex, sure. Not the point. The point i was trying to make is that i might be weird in that my intuitive proprioception feels like it mostly doesn't work. I know it's involved in coordinated motions, but that's not what i'm talking about. When we talk about it like a sixth sense - mine must be severely stinted. Like a hard of hearing person's hearing. To the point where i can be laying in bed some time and not know whether my arm is at my side or in front of my belly, so i have to move it to find out which one it is.
[deleted] t1_izrfnl1 wrote
[removed]
JaggedMetalOs t1_izs9bag wrote
It's not unusual to loose sense of your position if you don't move for a while, but trust me if you can touch your fingers together or touch your nose with your eyes closed then your proprioception is working, you wouldn't be able to do that without looking if it wasn't.
-domi- t1_izsc7cq wrote
Sure. Just the way in which it's working there can hardly be called a "sense." It's like calling the secretions of my esophageal mucosal membranes a sense.
Wu-TangCrayon t1_iztngb8 wrote
It's as ridiculous as calling the movement of sound waves in your inner ear getting converted to sound signals in the brain a "sense." That's clearly just a body's subconscious mechanical function.
-domi- t1_izvnt59 wrote
No, in very consciously aware of sounds. The tinnitus makes low sounds difficult, but i can consciously tell them apart if i try.
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