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The Human Senses
We’re more than the 5 senses we’ve been taught. Researchers now count between 20-33 human senses.
Sensory Experience Compilation
Body awareness & internal senses
- Proprioception – sense of where your body parts are in space
- Kinesthesia – sense of body movement
- Equilibrioception – balance (inner ear)
- Vestibular sense – head position/acceleration (often grouped with balance)
- Nociception – pain
- Thermoception – temperature
- Interoception – internal bodily states (heartbeat, hunger, etc.)
- Chemoreception – detecting internal chemical changes (e.g., blood CO₂ levels)
- Baroception – sensing internal pressure changes
- Hunger (Gastroception)
- Thirst
- Pulmonary stretch – lung inflation sense
- Bladder/bowel distension sense
- Magnetoception – (debated in humans, well-documented in animals)
Touch subdivisions (touch isn’t really “one” sense)
- Mechanoreception – pressure/vibration
- Pruriception – itch
- Tactile pressure
- Vibration sense
- Hair movement/follicle sense
Time & spatial senses
- Chronoception – sense of time passing
- Sense of direction/spatial orientation
Taste subdivisions
- Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami – often split into 5 separate receptor-based “senses” rather than one
- Fat taste (oleogustus) – proposed as a 6th taste
Smell-related
- Pheromone detection (vomeronasal, debated in humans)
Other proposed/debated senses
- Sense of muscle tension
- Joint position sense
- Sense of effort
- Sense of satiety
- Thermal pain vs. thermal warmth (sometimes split as separate systems)
- Sense of nausea
- Sense of numbness/paresthesia pathways
- Sense of skin stretch
- Sense of “wetness” (actually a combination of thermoception + mechanoreception, since there’s no dedicated wetness receptor)