A team of California scientists from the Scripps Research Institute announced that the human body has a so-called sixth sense in addition to the five known senses – sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. They call it interoception and it allows the nervous system to perceive and evaluate internal body signals and thus maintain the balance of basic functions.
According to scientists, interoception explains how the brain knows when a person should breathe, when blood pressure drops or when the body is fighting an infection. “Interoception is fundamental to almost every aspect of health, but it still represents a largely unexplored territory of neuroscience.,” said Professor Xin Jin.
The interoception research project was supported by a $14.2 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Its goal is to map in detail how sensory neurons connect internal organs – for example, the heart or the digestive tract – with the nervous system. Scientists plan to create the first atlas of this internal sensory system.
Interoception was first described at the beginning of the 20th century by the British neuroscientist Charles Sherrington, but for decades scientists did not pay attention to it. While the classical senses perceive the outside world through specialized organs, interoception works thanks to a network of neural pathways inside the body. That is why scientists call it a hidden sixth sense.
In a statement, the authors explained that signals from internal organs spread widely, often overlap, and are difficult to isolate and measure. According to previous studies, disorders of this system are associated with autoimmune diseases, chronic pain, high blood pressure and psychological problems, such as depression, anxiety or eating disorders.
Professor Jin emphasized that the goal of their project is to understand how the brain keeps the body in balance. “By creating the first atlas of this system, we want to lay the foundation for a better understanding of how the brain maintains body balance, how this balance can be disrupted by disease, and how it can be restored“, he stated.
