What is “Sixth-sense”?
We humans perceive the outside world through our five senses. I can see my laptop because of my eyes, and I can hear the classical music playing right now through my ears. These senses allow us to experience the world around us.
Now, let’s try a simple exercise:
Close your eyes and try to locate your body parts — your arms, your ears, your legs.
Did you do it? Were you able to find them? If you’re like most of us, you probably could. Now, ask yourself: How did I do that?
None of your five senses were at play here. You didn’t see your arms (your eyes were closed), you didn’t touch them, you certainly didn’t smell them (and if you did, maybe it’s time to move up shower day), and you neither heard nor tasted them.
So how exactly were you able to locate your arms?
This is what we often refer to as the “sixth sense.” It’s an overused term, but I bet you’ve never really thought about what it actually means.
What you just experienced is proprioception — your body’s ability to sense where its parts are in space without needing to see them. It’s what allows you to walk without looking at your feet, touch your nose with your eyes closed, and maintain balance without consciously thinking about it.
Pretty cool, right?
But knowing what something is doesn’t necessarily mean we understand how it works. So far, we’ve identified what the so-called “sixth sense” actually is — proprioception — but we still haven’t explored how we’re able to do this.
It is just this — there are cells in our body — proprioceptors that are located in our muscles and joints that process sensory information when our body moves and sends proprioceptive feedback to the brain, and that’s how we locate our body parts.
The Mystery of Gut Feelings
Have you ever taken a longer route home because the usual path suddenly felt off? Where does this feeling come from? What part of our body does this sensing?
Unlike proprioception, which has a clear biological explanation, intuition is much harder to define. Is it also biological? Electrical? Or something else entirely?
We know that sharks have a true “sixth sense” — they detect the electric fields of their prey through specialized organs called ampullae of Lorenzini. This ability allows them to hunt with incredible precision, even in murky waters.
Do humans have something similar? Are we also perceiving an unseen field when something ‘feels’ wrong? Probably not. But what if our gut feeling is a different kind of sensing — one based on patterns?
Imagine that our ancestors faced similar life-or-death situations repeatedly. Over time, their brains may have evolved to recognize subtle cues — unconscious patterns that signal danger. Maybe this knowledge has been encoded in our DNA, passed down through generations, and surfaces today as intuition.
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s something we haven’t fully understood yet.
I’m leaving this open-ended because I believe in the magic of wonder — a magic that, unfortunately, seems to be fading in today’s world. So, let’s keep questioning, keep thinking, and keep exploring the unknown.
What do you think?
❤️ SUPRIYA