RELATED TERMS: Enaction Paradigm – Cognitive Science; Sensorimotor System
Sensory Systems
A design may explicitly and deliberately address one or all of the human body’s sensory systems. It may also be the case that a design addresses more that one of these senses implicitly or unintentionally; or unintentionally prioritises or hierarchises one of the sense over the others. Juhani Pallasmaa, for example, suggests that architectural practice has become dominated by ocularity and that architectural designs should seek to prioritise senses other than that of sight.
Together, the sensory systems enable us to constitute the world through our bodies and enable our bodies to navigate that world. They ‘ground’ and ‘orient’ us, a grounding which may be altered through proprioception, the feeling of being in our own skin, which is changed by the introduction of new objects, as actants, in the body’s space (Cranny-Francis, 2008).
Designs, and particularly emerging neuro- and ‘virtual reality’ technologies, intervene in that grounding and orientation, raising or altering our awareness of our interior and exterior environments and the relationships between them.
The five human senses that stem from the sense organs are:
- The gustatory system: the sense of taste
- The auditory system: the sense of hearing
- The olfactory system: the sense of smell
- The somatosensory system: the sense of touch
- The visual or ocular system: the sense of vision
There are three less talked about senses of the human body. They are:
- Proprioception, sometimes also called kinaesthesia, which is the sense of our body in the space around us
- Interoception, which is the sense of our internal organs and feeling our emotions
- The vestibular sense, which is the sense of balance and spatial awareness when combining movement with balance
Somatosensory System
From the perspective of design practices and the actantiality of designed outputs, the interest in somatosensory systems lies in what it contributes to an understanding of our sense of self, and of the ‘life- world’ in which it is embedded. It is understood, therefore, in the context of phenomenology and post-phenomenology, in as far as these approaches seek to understand humanity as an anthropotechnic being, to use a term coined by Peter Sloterdijk.
Investigators of the bodily senses define the somatosensory system as serving three major functions: proprioception, exteroception and interoception.
Proprioception a term derived from the Latin proprius, meaning ‘one’s own’. Conscious awareness of the posture and movements of our own body, particularly the arms, legs and head, is facilitated by receptors in skeletal muscle, joint capsules and the skin (Kandell et al., eds., 2013). Proprioception is the sense of our body in the space around us.
Exteroception is the sense of direct interaction between the body and the external world. This takes place principally through the sense of touch, including sensations of contact, pressure, stroking, motion, and vibration, as well as identification of objects. Exteroception also includes the thermal senses of heat and cold; and the sense of pain, or nociception.
Interoception is the sense of the function of viscera, the major organ systems of the body, and its internal state. Thus, interoception is the sense of our internal organs and feeling our emotions. Most of the events recorded by receptors in the viscera do not become conscious sensations. Nevertheless, the information conveyed by these receptors is crucial for regulating autonomic functions, particularly in the cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive and renal systems. Interoception constitutes a private, personal field of experience.
The Lived Body
Proceeding phenomenologically, however, it is found that the lived body operates as an integrated whole, often undermining any hard and fast distinction among the fields of visceral interoception, proprioception and exteroception (Leder, 2018)
Discussion
The name given to the overarching concept of body perception has changed over time. In the 19th century this overarching concept was referred to as ‘coenaesthesis,’ in the early 20th century ‘coenesthesia,’ in the second half of the 20th century ‘somesthesis,’ and now in the 21st century it is most frequently referred to as ‘interoception’ (Ceunen, Vlaeyen and Van Diest, 2016).
The exact definition of interoception was originally quite restrictive, involving only sensations stemming from viscera. For example, Sherrington (1906) introduced the notion of “interoceptors” to refer specifically to receptors on, and perceptions of, the visceral region, as opposed to proprioception and exteroception.
Now, interoception is more commonly positioned as, “an umbrella term for the phenomenological experience of the body state, an experience which is ultimately a product of the central nervous system” (Ceunen, Vlaeyen and Van Diest, 2016). This more inclusive definition takes interoception to embrace two forms of perception: proprioception, involving signals from the skin and musculoskeletal system; and visceroception, involving signals from the internal organs such as heart rate, breath and the digestive system.
References
Ceunen, E., Vlaeyen, J. W. S. and Van Diest, I. (2016) ‘On the origin of interoception’, Frontiers in Psychology, 7, pp. 1–17. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00743
Cranny-Francis, A. (2008) ‘Fabric(ated) ontologies: the biopolitics of smart design in clothing and jewellery’, Academia.edu. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/94760518/Fabric_ated_Ontologies_the_biopolitics_of_smart_design_in_clothing_and_jewellery (Accessed: 30 January 2024).
Kandell, E.R. et al., eds. (2013) The Somatosensory system: receptors and central pathways. In Eric R. Kandel et al. eds, Principles of neural science, 5th edition. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Klich, R. (2019) ‘Visceral dramaturgies: curating sensation in Immersive art’, Body, Space & Technology, 18(1), pp. 175–197. doi: 10.16995/bst.319
Leder, D. (2018) Inside Insights: A phenomenology of interoception. In: M. Tsakiris and H. De Preester, eds., The Interoceptive mind: from homeostasis to awareness, 307–322. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sherrington, C. S. (1906). The Integrative action of the nervous system. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Ward, A. (2023) Sensational: a new story of our senses. London, UK: Profile Books.
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