Sense Page

You may think that we humans only have 5 senses or those 5 are the main ones. Which is wrong! We have at least 21 main senses each as important as the last. (Good luck pronouncing some of these!)

Touch– The way something feels when we ‘touch’ something

Pressure– How hard or soft the touch is against us

Itch– Yes this is a sense! (The sensation of feeling itchy or an itch)

Thermoception– This one is a dual sense as it’s first job is to sense heat and cold and its second task is to monitor internal body temperature.

Sound– Detect vibrations in the air and transfer it into sound.

Smell– Uses a chemical reaction to sense a smell. Also combines with taste to make flavours (Ironically you ‘taste’ more with your nose than mouth….that’s why if you have a cold or bunged up nose you can’t taste anything!)

Proprioception– This basically is the sense of where your body parts are (Close your eyes and then touch your nose-that’s the Proprioception assisting you!)

Tension Sensors: Found in the muscles and allows the brain to monitor the muscle tension.

Equilibrioception: Allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement. It is found in the inner ear.

Stretch Receptors: Senses dilation of blood vessels. Found in such places as the lungs, stomach and gastrointestinal tract. It is often involved in headaches

Chemoreceptors: These trigger an area of the medulla in the brain that is involved in detecting blood born hormones and drugs. It also is involved in the vomiting reflex.

Thirst: Monitors hydration levels and knows when it should tell you to drink

Hunger: Sense that tells you when you should eat

Magentoception: The sense to detect magnetic fields. We have a very weak one compared to animals so it’s use is kind of questionable in terms of navigation etc.

Time: (Debatable) There’s no actual sense found in the body that allows people to perceive time (Time is a made up human invention anyway) but with experimental data shows than humans have a very high accurate sense of time.

The Dyspraxia Link It’s worth noting that this isn’t a direct assumption with Dyspraxia but more of a sub category. Autistic people can have it too. It’s just the way the body and mind react to the outside world and itself. We’re all different anyway and have different strengths and weaknesses of sense.

Now to tie it all back into Dyspraxia. All these sensors can be affected by Dyspraxia either positively but mainly negatively. From hunger where you feel hungry but really aren’t to actually being hungry and not feeling it. I could go down the list explaining the Dyspraxic version….but it’s mainly going to be 1 of 5 different options

1- Feeling complete opposite sense (Feeling hunger when not etc) 2- Under exaggerated sense (Feeling pain but not as much as you should be feeling, etc) 3-Normal functioning sense 4-Over exaggerated sense (Light seems brighter than it actually is, etc)

It’s also worth mentioning that not all senses will follow the same pattern, it’s a mixed bag. Some senses could be normal, other sense, or over/under exaggerated etc.