Proprioception is the imperceptible and invisible sense, often referred to as the unconscious sixth sense. It relies on mechanosensory neurons located within muscles, tendons and joints and, as such, it co-ordinates the body’s position in the brain, facilitating spatial awareness to produce simple movements, such as getting up from the chair or opening a window. Unlike other senses, it runs in the background of conscious awareness: unless you have a proprioceptive deficit, you do not need to use other senses to know where your body is in space.
During the pandemic, we have seen a global awakening of the importance of bodily contacts for social life. The limitations of screen-based interactions and the selective loss of the sense of smell and taste in Covid-19 patients has further underscored the need to better understand the role of all six human senses. In 2022, proprioception will be selectively stimulated to enhance our sensory and physical experiences and widen the multisensory repertoire at our disposal.
Training proprioception needs a careful balance between under-stimulation and over-stimulation. Studies show that some individuals, especially vulnerable people, young children or individuals diagnosed with autism or post-traumatic stress disorder, can be overwhelmed by a simultaneous engagement of all senses. Conversely, a judicial combination of selected senses – such as proprioception with vision and hearing, for example – can have additive beneficial effects for working memory. The benefits can be unlocked by each individual with simple exercises at home and, in 2022, we will see a surge of apps and online resources targeting demographics with bespoke training programmes and body rituals.
Commercial uses of proprioception oriented towards the general public will be visible in the retail industry. Our relationship with goods such as clothes, accessories, furniture and cars will be determined by their spatially intelligent design and our bodily experience with them. Service industries will also make use of proprioception. Restaurants, for example, with revolving floors and real or stimulated views will rise in popularity, as customers seek more direct connections between spatial body stimulation and the food they eat. Affective proprioception, which stimulates the intrinsic pleasure involved in movement activities such as dance or yoga, will be combined with aquatherapy (which activates the sense of touch through skin stimulation) or forest bathing (which provides a whole-body sensory experience) for both domestic and international wellness tourists.
2022 will also represent a turning point for the ways in which some school curricula incorporate proprioception for transformative learning experiences. One trend in children’s publishing will be its use in storytelling. On the digital-fiction front, virtual reality will enable readers to grasp story characters in their own space and move, with their whole body, through the story universe. With colleagues here at the University of Stavanger, we have also been piloting more analogue reading experiences that connect proprioception to children’s stories. Young readers will be encouraged to use their whole bodies by treating books as objects that they carry around or walk on as imaginary book bridges or story rivers.
There is a huge opportunity in integrating proprioception with existing activities, products and services, but the real potential lies in augmenting our bodies with new sensory capabilities. Just as David Eagleman has pioneered the field of atypical sensory stimulation that grants individuals new perceptions, proprioception can be consciously deployed not in the background, but as the “Sense of All Senses” which augments the unique dimensions of our human experience.
Get more expert predictions for the year ahead. The WIRED World in 2022 features intelligence and need-to-know insights sourced from the smartest minds in the WIRED network. Available now on newsstands, as a digital download, or you can order your copy online.
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