How many senses does a person have?

How many senses does a person have? Vision, hearing, taste, olfaction, and haptic perception...that makes five. The sixth sense is usually considered the ability to foresee the future. But is there anything that we forgot?

In addition to the main five senses, there are other senses inherent to every person that really aren't extraordinary at all.

Thermoception is the sensation and perception of temperature – or more accurately, temperature differences. This is the ability to feel the temperature of the environment and surrounding objects. All thanks to the thermoreceptors located throughout the skin.

Nociception is the perception of pain by the skin, joints, and organs of the body. Here’s the interesting thing - the feeling of pain can occur both in the case of real damage and from imaginary, potential damage. Nociception is responsible for forming a person's understanding of what is safe and what is not. If there were no pain receptors in the body, a person would be injured more often - they simply wouldn't know what is dangerous and what is not.



Proprioception is the perception of your body in space. Even if you close your eyes, you can easily clap your hands or touch the top of your head. And you don't have to see your hands to do so. All this is possible thanks to proprioception. It works like this: information from the muscles travel through nerve fibers goes to the nuclei of the central nervous system and then through the thalamus to the parietal lobe of the brain, where the body schema is formed.

Time perception is studied in psychology and neuroscience. It refers to the subjective experience of time. Namely, how long events seem to us. Remember how long a boring lesson at school seemed, and in contrast, the holidays were over all too quickly? All of this is related to the perception of time.