Ny teori - 6. sans

[Armalite66]

The Sixth Sense

The vital but mysterious sensation of position and movement

by Paul Ingraham, RMT

 

There really is a sixth sense: it’s called proprioception. It is the sense of position and movement. It is produced by nerves in our muscles and connective tissues. Without proprioception, you couldn’t stand up. You couldn’t so much as scratch your nose, because you wouldn’t be able to find it.

 

There is a very rare neurological condition that deprives people of this extraordinary, little-known sense. Oliver Sacks describes a case of it in his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: “She continues to feel the loss of proprioception, that her body is dead, not-real, not-hers… She can find no words for this state, and can only use analogies derived from other senses….”

 

We don’t know what proprioception “feels” like because we cannot shut it off and it rarely changes intensity the way sights or sounds do. You can’t truly know what proprioception feels like until it is gone.

 

An important, silent sense

Proprioception is a very large sense. It produces a tremendous amount of data, as much or more than all the other senses combined. So although it is a silent sense, it is a very important one. Just knowing that it exists is significant self-knowledge.

 

The nerves that generate proprioception are embedded in the tissues of our musculoskeletal system: in muscles, tendons, ligaments, joint capsules and cartilage. They send information to the brain about how much tension or pressure is being applied to them, and how quickly it’s changing. The brain uses this information to figure out how hard your quadriceps are contracting, how bent or twisted your knee is, how long a step you’ve taken. It tells you the size of something held in your arms by their position. It tells you the effort needed to lift a glass of water without throwing it into your face.

 

Proprioception is even more complex and vital than that. You might expect the brain to be able to figure out the position of the eye based on what you are looking at. But that’s not how it works. You actually know the direction and focus of your gaze because you know the position of your eyeball, and the effort it took to change the shape of your lens. Without those nerves in the muscles of the eyeballs, we would be able to see, but we wouldn’t know where any of it was. Try to imagine that! You would, in effect, be virtually blind.

 

An understanding of proprioception is routinely applied in a variety of physical therapies. The most familiar example is the relaxing effect of vibration. This works on a simple principle called “proprioceptive confusion.” If you move or shake the body at random, the brain gets a deluge of nonsensical proprioceptive data. The nervous system, overwhelmed by the random stimuli, effectively “gives up” and stops resisting the movement: providing you with deep, muscle loosening relaxation!

 

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Samsvarer med hva vi vet om nervesystemet idag.

 

Feks. For å bli fleksibel, tøyer man. Men hva stopper deg egentlig fra å gå i spagat? Noen muskler, sener? Nei. Det er nervesystemet som trekker musklene sammen når du prøver å gå i spagat. Ved å tøye om og om igjen, "lærer" du nervesystemet til at den ikke trenger å spenne musklene. Dette kan settes i sammenheng med artikkelen over.

 

Samme med barn og ungdom som ofte snubler og er litt klumsete. Det er rett og slett den 6. sansen som ikke klarer å følge med utviklingen.

 

Noen kommentarer?

[Moonshine]

Wow.

 

Dette trodde jeg var bare "ALU-en" til hjernen, men nå er jeg delvis overbevist. Jeg klarer ikke helt å forklare meg selv, men jeg er skeptisk til at en sans kan være en ting som foregår i hjernen, og ikke direkte har en tilknytning til verden rundt oss. Sansene vi har er:

Synet merker frekvenser og energistyrke i det synlige lyspekteret.

Hørselen kan detektere atmosfæriske partikler i bevegelse fra 20 til 20000Hz.

Smak er en av to kjemiske sanser. Gir et intrykk av hva noe smaker.

Lukt er den andre kjemiske sansen.

Følelsen har på samme måte som synet, flere avdelinger. Disse er:

Å føle trykk.

Å føle varme.

Å føle smerte.

Balanse.

Bevegelse og posisjon.

 

Hvorvidt vi kan klassifisere disse som egne sanser, er ikke opp til meg, men hvis det gjøres skal vi altså ha 11 sanser totalt. Jeg klarer meg med 5.