The Three Power Senses – The Sensory Series Part 1
In kindergarten, you probably learned about the five basic senses. Taste, touch, hearing, vision, and smell. All of these senses are important to a human in helping them with learning about their environment and how to interact within it.
When a baby is first born, her first experience with the mother is to feel her touch. Babies has limited vision in the beginning. A mothers’ touch can provide soothing, comfort, and give the baby a sense of calm in their world. As the other senses begin to refine, the baby can hear and orient to sound helping it know where sound is coming from. She also can begin to discriminate sound such as the difference between mother’s voice and someone else’s. Vision begins to develop and baby can initially see a blurred image of the objects presented and slowly refined vision comes in. Taste is also a part of this picture. Smell and taste are often associated together and as the baby can smell breastmilk or the scent of his or her caregiver, this helps them to feed calmly for growth and development.
These senses are important in a child’s development. When a child has disruption in their development, a pediatric occupational therapist looks to see if it is related to how they are processing the senses in their world.
There are three other hidden senses. These are senses that are not well-known to the general public but nonetheless essential for human development.
Proprioceptors are your muscle’s volume meter
The first is Proprioception. Proprioceptor‘s are found in your muscles and joints, and are activated by active stretch and pull of the muscles. Proprioception helps to give you a sense about how your body is moving. How much force to act upon an object. As well as how to grade your movements for refined, precision changes.
This sounds pretty complicated. Simply put, your proprioceptor‘s are your muscle’s volume meter. They help you to know how much force to use when you are picking up a baby versus moving a large piece of furniture. How much force to use when you are trying to perform a precision task such as tweezing your eyebrows versus the refined movements of forming letters with a pencil. People who have challenges with processing proprioception or discriminating proprioception may look clumsy, have difficulty performing fine motor tasks, or struggle with using tools or learning sports. You can read more about proprioception in my blog here.
The Vestibular system is your body’s GPS
Another hidden sense is the vestibular system. You vestibular system is located in your inner ear. It is activated by movement of your head in space. This means anytime you shake your head yes or no, move your head up or down, or turn your head side to side you are activating your vestibular system. The vestibular system is sort of like your internal GPS system. It helps you to know where you are in space.
Think about your own body awareness. You don’t need to have your eyes open in order to know that you are upside down when you are doing downward dog in yoga. When you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom; you are able to find your way from point A to point B in the dark without ending up in the closet. (if you’re familiar with the environment). This is all due to the integration of your sensory systems with a strong influence from your vestibular system. It helps you to know where you are in space and using a previous memory, help you get to where you need to go in the dark.
When a person has struggles with the vestibular system, they may have difficulty with sports but also may have challenges maintaining a calm and alert state of regulation. The vestibular system helps us to keep adjust right level of arousal for matching an activity we are trying to engage in.
Interoception helps you understand your inner body
The final hidden sense is called Interoception. Interoception is the sense of your internal body. This sense helps you with your emotions, such as feeling happy, calm, excited, frustrated, and irritated. Interoception helps you notice the internal body workings that occur before you have a physical or emotional response.
Imagine, your heart starts beating hard and your hands are fisted. This might mean that you are angry. You take a deep breath or walk to calm yourself. The other aspect of this special sense is its ability to help you know about your physical internal body working. This can include things such as hunger, thirst, tiredness, or your need to use the bathroom. If a person has difficulty with Interoception they may have challenges with tuning into what is going on with their body. This might come up when they are becoming stressed or anxious, knowing when to use the restroom, or noticing if they are hungry or thirsty.
The integration of these hidden senses is part of human development
When all of the senses are working well together in an organized fashion, higher-level skills are able to be developed well. Academic learning requires a learner to attend and focus. They also need fine motor skills, accurate use of two sides of the body, and coordinated movements. These form off of the integration of proprioception, system, and tactile processing.
The job of a pediatric occupational therapist is to help this child to develop and refine these skills. An occupational therapist trained in sensory processing will work with your child on sensing and tuning into their body so that they are better aware of what their body is doing in order to manage everyday tasks.
Although it takes time and patience, children are better able to perform everyday tasks as well as feel more confident!
