Qwertz

At least they put this line in. You have to read the whole description to find it, though. -Q

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/16/prom.canceled.ap/index.html It's a Catholic school. I went to a Catholic school. About half of my class of 72 students had a drug or alcohol problem, and two thirds had had some sexually transmitted disease at some point during their four years. And the school never did anything about it. But they'd be damned before they'd let you graduate if you were one hour short on community service. Silly Catholics. I'd say someone's got their priorities messed up. -Q

Proprioception differs from somatosensation in both structure and processing. Somatosensors are located in the dermis and detect pressure and temperature. Propriosensors are located in muscles, joints and tendons and measure flexion and tension. These sets of data are integrated differently by different structures - somatosensation by the cortex (hence its applicability of conceptualization) and propriosensation by the cerebellum. Also, patients can lose proprioception with no effect on somatosensation, and vice versa. As an example, several years ago I had a surgery on my mandible, which bilaterally aggrivated the intramandibular inferior alveolar nerve, which supplies sensation to, among other things, the lower lip. While the right side healed perfectly, the left did not, so I experience almost no somatosensation in a portion of my lower lip, yet this does not impair my ability to drink from a glass, for example, because I am fully aware of its position. For an example of loss of proprioception with retention of somatosensation, I refer you to Dr. Sacks' book. -Q

As a sidebar, humans do have more than five senses - they have (at least) seven. The other two (vestibulation & proprioception) are often overlooked because they deal with perceiving the body itself and its position in space instead of the perception of other entities. Vestibulation is responsible for balance and determining which way is up relative to gravity, and proprioception is responsible for perceiving the body's relative position to itself, ie the position of limbs relative to the torso, or relative to one another. These two senses are distinct, but related, and are very sensative to internal chemistry. They can be affected by drugs (ketamine, a dissociative tranquilizer popular as a club drug, causes loss of proprioception, and alcohol can cause loss of vestibulation.) Dr. Oliver Sacks' book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat details a case study of a woman with proprioceptory disfunction ("The Disembodied Woman"). Part of the reason that scientific inquiry into the 'paranormal' is difficult is that all science requires that we start from what we perceive. Proprioception, for example, is such a primary sense that it barely involves the brain at all (sensory apparata include somatosensors in muscles, tendons and ligaments, as well as the cerebellum), and its function is thus only realized by the person consciously when he has first been deprived of it. The same would be true for any other undiscovered or unstudied senses humans may have - scientific inquiry into them would presuppose that we already know exactly what we're looking for. Vision, somatosensation and audition (and to a lesser, but still substantial degree gustation and olfaction) are directly involved in conception (they provide sensations which are automatically integrated into perceptions of entities), so their workings are more readily accessible to inquiry. But the more fundamental senses like vestibulation and proprioception (and again, to a degree, gustation and olfaction, which are less conceptual than emotional) are less accessible by the conscious mind because either a) their function is so basic that we take it for granted, or their effects on physiology are so weak that they elude detection. In conclusion, while sensation beyond the five 'traditional' senses does in fact exist, it is improbable, but not impossibe, that science will be able to discover any other forms of sensation beyond vestibulation and proprioception, as any such forms would be either too fundamental, or too weak, to be detected. -Q