Humans generally already know that there are five senses that humans have: feeling touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. However, humans actually have six senses. Then, what is the human sixth sense?
Human sixth sense is interoception or interoception. Interoception serves to sense the internal state of our body. It helps us sense and interpret internal signals that regulate vital functions in our body, such as hunger, thirst, body temperature, and heart rate.
Launching Science Alert, most of us may not be aware of interception even though its function is extraordinary. Mental health is especially important because it contributes to many psychological processes including decision-making abilities, social skills and emotional health.
Jennifer Murphy, Lecturer in Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London and PhD Candidate Freya Prentice at Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, UCL has a number of things to say about interception.
"Interception disorders are even reported in many mental health conditions - including depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. This may also explain why many mental health conditions have similar symptoms - such as disturbed sleep or fatigue," they wrote.
So far, according to Murphy and Prentice, their analysis has found that interoception can differ between men and women. Women were significantly less accurate on heart-focused tasks (and to some extent lung-focused tasks) than men.
This difference did not appear to be explained by other factors such as how hard the participants tried during the study test, or by physiological differences, such as body weight or blood pressure.
"Although we found significant differences across heart rate tasks, the results for other tasks were less clear. This may be because only a small proportion of the studies looked at lung and stomach perception. It may be too early to say whether men and women differed in their perceptions of these signals," he explained.
"But because we know that interoception is important for well-being, differences in interoception may partly explain why more women suffer from anxiety and depression than men."
Impaired interception can affect many areas, including emotional, social, and cognitive functioning, all of which are known risk factors for many mental health conditions. Therefore, they agreed that recognizing the differences in the way men and women perceive interoceptive signals is important for treating mental illness.