Where's Your Body At?

Close your eyes. Now try to touch your nose. You can do it without seeing anything! How do your fingers know where to go?

Our five senses tell us about the outside world: taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing. But, inside, your body is using another sense, proprioception. Proprioception (say pro-PREE-oh-cept-shun) is how we keep track of each part of our body. Proprioception is so important that sometimes it’s called our sixth sense.

Every time we move, our muscles change length. Joints are where two or more bones in your body come together. When we move, our joints change position. Our brains keep track of this movement. Our bodies are constantly monitoring where each of our limbs are. All this happens without us ever realizing it! Monitoring each part of our bodies is part of the job of proprioception.

Have you ever watched a baby try to grab a toy? Learning to grasp and hold takes a lot of skills put together. One of these skills is proprioception. Babies have to learn where their hands are so that they can move to reach a toy.

Another part of proprioception is knowing how hard you’ll have to work to do something. Think about lifting a bucket of water. Your eyes may tell your brain the bucket looks heavy. You will need to use a lot of strength to lift the bucket off the floor. But be careful. Don’t use too much power! If you lift too hard, then all of the water will slosh out of the bucket. Proprioception not only tells your arms and hands how to move to grab the bucket, but it also tells them how hard to pull so that the bucket is lifted just right.

Proprioception is a conversation between parts of your body and your brain. Nerves are the part of the body that send electrical signals to the brain. Special nerves buried deep in muscle fibers seem to help monitor place and motion. Scientists still don’t know exactly how proprioception occurs. Some scientists think that proprioception is a result of these nerves in muscle fibers. Other scientists think that nerves within joints also help with proprioception.

Our body’s ability to handle proprioception seems to get worse with age. Signals between nerves in the muscles and the brain are not as healthy in older people. That’s one of the reasons why older people are at a higher risk than young people for falling down.

But people of all ages can sometimes have trouble with proprioception. Treatment can help. This treatment is known as therapy. Occupational therapists are people who can show us different ways to help the body and brain learn how to talk to each other. Sometimes the therapy might mean adding extra weight to a person’s arms or legs while they move. In other therapy sessions a person might be asked to push a heavy box. Another exercise could be to lift a heavy weight. These tasks are all designed to help give extra feedback from the muscles to the brain. Developing muscle tone also helps improve proprioception.

Now you know that your body isn’t using only five senses. Your brain and body are using proprioception to make sure you move just right!