I learned about interoception from The Harvard Gazette about a year ago. The notion of the sixth sense electrified me at once. According to medical researchers, this stands for perception of internal signals from the body and can be compared to the five senses already known to all—sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch. And the organs involved range widely, from heart, kidneys, bladder, lungs, stomach, and intestines, to skin and bones. I immediately searched for the term on the World Wide Web, and I found many websites dedicated to the so-called sixth sense. To my surprise, I also found a Wikipedia page dedicated to interoception.[1] According to many sources, it goes more than a century back, which made me annoyed with myself. How come I have missed it for so many years? Anyhow, I was also annoyed by the fact that I could not find a single site that would point out that interoception is part and parcel of the animal in us (“The Animal in Us,” November 4, 1993; “The Animal in Us, Again,” December 31, 2014; and “The Animal in Us, Again and Again,” January 15, 2016). Which is why I searched for it one more time a short while ago. Predictably enough, I found precious little. At best, it is mentioned that research shows that some animals also enjoy the benefits of interoception. The fact that humans have inherited it from their animal precursors is not mentioned even once. So much for medical researchers at this day and age.

Footnote

1. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception (accessed on June 19, 2025).