Most people have eight senses. Others lack certain ones, or an aspect of one. For example, I lack an aspect of interoception because I don’t have a sense of thirst.
IMPORTANT: People with SPD can be hypersensitive to an input and still want more of it.
Folks can also be a mix of hypo, hyper, or seeking for any specific sense.
Interoception helps you know what your body organs are doing and what you need to return to a state of contentment.
Interoception can affect your thoughts and emotions and vice versa. For example, ADHD medication or coffee, may make someone’s heart and breathing rate increase, causing the brain to interpret this as a feeling of anxiety and start looking for an external cause for those emotions. Or, experiencing the emotion of excitement may make someone’s heart and breathing rate increase.
Interoreceptors include baroreceptors (triggered by “stretch”), piezoreceptors (shear stress and distension), nociceptors (pain), chemoreceptors (chemical composition), osmoreceptors (concentration of solutes in the blood), etc.
Hyposensitivity
- Sudden, late realization of strong hunger, strong thirst, or immediate need for the restroom
- Failure to notice injury, particularly in the limbs
- Trouble falling asleep
- Frequent dehydration or complete lack of thirst
- Indifferent to hot or cold weather, failure to notice fever
- May feel fairly normal, even with mild to moderate sickness
Hypersensitivity
- Low pain tolerance, particularly in the gut
- Anxiety and easily stressed out, due to increased perception of heart and breathing rate
- Frequently hungry, thirsty, or needing the restroom, seldom full, satisfied, or comfortable
- Intolerance of heat/cold
Seeking
- Risk taking, due to desire to feel elevated heart and/or breathing rate
- Enjoyment of temperature variation
- Overeating, over drinking, or excessive sleeping
- Skin picking, nail peeling, hair pulling, or other harmful behaviors (GOD forbid)
Proprioception helps you know where your body parts are relative to each other, facilitating coordinated movements.
Proprioception receptors are found throughout the body, processing information from skeletal muscles, tendon organs located at the junction of muscles and tendons, and the capsules and ligaments surrounding joints.
Hyposensitivity
- Lack of coordination/clumsiness, particularly when there is no visual input; i.e., needing to watch own hands and/or feet to avoid tripping, or falling down stairs, or to engage in sports
- Instant rage with soft touch
- Need for constant movement; can be cause of something like restless leg
- May prefer to sit on a foot when seated or "double cross" legs (at the knee and ankle)
- Emotional distress from unconscious sensation of floating/disconnected hands/feet
- Poor handwriting, difficulty learning to type, and/or struggles with fine motor work
- Joint injury, dislocations, subluxations due to putting joints under overwhelming pressure
Hypersensitivity
- Emotional outbursts to requests to perform physical tasks
- Refuses hard, chewy foods/gum
- Avoidance of jumping, running, clapping, stretching, reaching, to avoid being jarred or jolted
- Avoidance of weight bearing activities, climbing, monkey bars/pull ups
- Resistance to changing positions (sitting to standing to lying down)
- Avoidance of weight bearing activities and climbing
- Refuses to sit with crossed legs or a foot tucked
Seeking
- Rough and tumble play, including bumping or crashing into people or things
- Chews gum, wants chewy or hard foods, chews on pen caps, etc.
- Hangs from things
- Heavy footfall when walking, likes to stomp
- Climbs rocks, furniture, on cars, engages in parkour
- Craves hard pressure
- Jumps or falls heavily into chairs, sofa, or onto the floor
- Emotional or mental injury due to presumption of lack of emotional/mental sensitivity, due to rambunctious physical interactions
Smell (olfaction) helps you find food, discriminate toxic/infectious or otherwise undesirable substances, and detect social and relational cues.
This sense affects memory, emotion, attraction, relationships, and the perception of taste. Smell receptors are chemoreceptors expressed in the cell membranes of actual neurons. There are about 400 smell receptor types that the brain can use to distinguish over 1,000,000,000 different odors (we think).
Hyposensitivity
- Difficulty avoiding spoiled foods
- Weight loss due to lack of interest in eating
- Failure to avoid offensive body odors due to poor hygiene or overuse of cologne
- Illness, injury, or poisoning from smoke, natural gas leaks, or inadequate ventilation when using chemicals, paints, etc.
Hypersensitivity
- Mistaken as dishonest or untrustworthy due to ability to distinguish and notice odors that are imperceptible to others
- Refusal of seemingly fresh foods
- Avoidance of cleaning products, colognes, food smells, and stores with "signature" marketing fragrances
- Refusal to hug or be in enclosed spaces with smelly people
- Job and relational stress due to dissonance between a desire to interact and need to avoid odors
Seeking
- Odors may be prioritized over other features of clothing, housewares, automobiles, locations, or people, etc.
- Strong desire for strong or highly specific odors
- Territorial regarding odors in clothing or other items, location, etc. and may be accused of greediness or selfishness
Sight (vision) helps you recognize objects and people, find and select wholesome food, navigate, read, notice patterns or things that don’t belong, avoid toxic or infectious items, discern whether others are friends or foes, and discriminate between environments that are as they should be and those that aren’t.
Most human brains devotes more space to vision that to all other senses combined and is the most relied-upon sense, barring exception. While one or more functioning eyes are necessary for vision, much of what constitutes the sense of sight occurs in the brain.
Hyposensitivity
- Difficulty perceiving discrepancies/distinctions between visual inputs in color, pattern, shape, presence/absence, etc.
- Inability to perceive mimicked 3-dimensionality in holographic materials or autostereograms/
- Poor depth perception
- Face blindness
Hypersensitivity
- Notices minute discrepancies/distinctions between visual inputs in color, pattern, shape, or presence/absence
- Navigating accurately at high speed while piloting/driving, may engage in daring or reckless flying/driving for enjoyment
- Skilled at sports requiring accuracy or precision of ball/puck/bullet/etc. placement
- May be overwhelmed by bright or flashing lights
- Experiences rage, inability to pay attention to other things, or becomes depressed or lethargic when exposed to fluorescent lights
- Insistent regarding colors, patterns, shapes of clothing and/or decor, regardless of color, pattern, or shape
Seeking
- Desire for bright colors, bright lights, and complicated or abundant patterns
- Fascination and/or comfort while looking at certain colors, patterns, shininess, opalescence
- Stares at or experiences visual immersion while looking at items or people with certain visual qualities
- Strong desire for beauty in self, others, and various environments
- Devotes more time than others to looking at objects and/or people.
Hearing (audition) helps people perceive and locate threats and opportunities (both up close and at distance), communicate, and detect and participate in the emotional state of others.
Hearing involves funneling sound into the ear canal where it moves the eardrum, which moves small bones, that move tiny hair cells that transmit signals to the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve transmits those signals to the temporal lobe of the brain.
Hyposensitivity
- Difficulty perceiving discrepancies/distinctions between auditory inputs in volume, tone, or other qualities
- Fails to respond when called or to other sounds typical to the environment, despite functional audition, etc.
- Difficulty processing verbal instructions
- Needs loud sounds for perception
Hypersensitivity
- Notices minute discrepancies/distinctions between auditory inputs in frequency, pattern, quality, or presence/absence
- Skilled at mimicking sounds, memorizing or producing music and lyrics
- May be overwhelmed by loud sounds
- Insistent regarding volume, tone, or other sound qualities
Seeking
- Desire for frequent auditory input / intolerance of silence
- Fascination and/or comfort while listening to certain volume, tone, or other sound qualities
- May create own sounds, including repetition and experimentation with various sound qualities
- Devotes more time than others to listening to sound or specific sounds
Taste (gustation) helps you discriminate toxic or infectious substances from nutritious ones and to want to eat or drink nutritious substances.
Taste is fairly simplistic and is currently understood to be comprised of 5 basic flavor types, namely, sweet (sugars), salty (salts), bitter (toxic/medicinal substances), sour (acid and fermentation products), and umami (glutamates). The brain coordinates smell and taste to produce sensations of various flavors, which is why damage or hyposensitivity to smell affects perception of “taste.”
Gustation also includes receptors that provide a sensation of heat or cold. These are triggered by temperature as well as certain chemicals that mimic temperature. For example, false sensation of heat is triggered by capsacin (hot chillies), allyl isothiocyanate (wasabi, horseradish, mustard), and allicin (garlic, onions), etc. False sensation of cold is triggered by menthol (mint), camphor (thyme, rosemary, basil), eucalyptol (rosemary, cardamom, basil), etc.
Hyposensitivity
- Difficulty perceiving discrepancies/distinctions between gustatory inputs
- Difficulty perceiving food that has gone bad, particularly if sense of smell is damaged or hyposensitive
- Not fussy about taking bitter medications or indifferent to foods that mimic heat
- May consume toxic substances (GOD forbid)
Hypersensitivity
- Notices minute discrepancies/distinctions between gustatory inputs in taste and temperature
- Rejects seemingly fresh foods as rancid
- May be overwhelmed by strong flavors, mimicked heat or cold
- Doesn't perceive "bland" foods as bland and will enjoy them more than most people
Seeking
- Desire for frequent gustatory input in the form of food, drink, and gum
- Consumption of an unusual amount of mints, spices, herbs, coffee, alcohol (GOD forbid)
- Fascination and/or comfort while consuming food and drink with certain taste, flavor, temperature, or mimicked temperature
- Creates own food or drink, including experimentation with various taste, flavor, temperature, or mimicked temperature qualities
- Craving for strong flavors, temperatures, or mimicked temperatures
- Spends an unusual amount of time thinking about food or drink
Touch (somatosensation) helps people perceive pain, pressure, temperature, and objects (shape, size, texture), grasp items and walk without falling (motor control/feedback), and experience affection and emotional and mental comfort.
Somatosensation involves various types of receptors that detect sustained pressure, deep pressure, light touch, skin motion/stretching, temperature, and pain/itching.
Hyposensitivity
- Difficulty perceiving the location, pressure, texture, or sharpness of somatosensory inputs
- High pain tolerance to flesh wounds and high tolerance to "cold plunge," etc.
- Risk-taking behaviors due to impaired ability to feel pain or experience discomfort
- Indifference to temperature on the skin, may not dress appropriately for the weather
- Indifferent to the legitimate pain or discomfort of others, instead viewing them as melodramatic
- Considered rugged by others
Hypersensitivity
- Notices minute discrepancies/distinctions between sematosensory inputs in pressure, texture, sharpness, and location
- Displays unexpectedly high level of empathy/sympathy for the pain and discomfort of others
- Instantly enraged or emotionally/mentally overwhelmed by certain types or amounts of sematosensory inputs
- Extreme startle response upon unexpected touch
- Insistent regarding temperature, clothing, seams, textures, etc.
Seeking
- May choose clothing or furniture for the feel of it above other characteristics
- May rub fabrics on face or mouth
- Unusually hot or cold water used for bathing or washing
The vestibular sense helps people sense inertia due to motion and gravity. The brain coordinates the vestibular sense with sight, proprioception, and touch to orient the body within a space and maintain balance.
Receptors for the vestibular sense are located in the inner ear and measure vertical and horizontal linear acceleration.
NOTE: The spatial orientation of the vestibular sense differs from that of proprioception, in that proprioception involves the orientation of the body’s constituent parts relative to each other, while the vestibular sense involves the orientation of the head in space. This orientation of the head combined with the relative orientation of the rest of the body relative to the head permit the brain to understand the orientation of the whole body and its constituent parts in space.
Hyposensitivity
- Difficulty perceiving whether one is "right side up" or "upside down"
- Clumsy in motion, with difficulty distinguishing changes to orientation -- particularly if also hyposensitive to proprioception and/or touch
- Indifferent to accelerative forces such as during a ride on a rollar coaster, spinning, etc.
- Difficulty maintaining balance, and so also with standing or walking
- Sensation of floating or disorientation, feelings of "un-realness" and disconnection with the environment
- Make bump or knock into things or people
- Poor coordination, including poor eye coordination and tracking
- Sensation of falling or flying off into space when sitting down or otherwise changing position
Hypersensitivity
- Notices minute discrepancies/distinctions among various head positions
- Skilled at sports, dancing, and other physical activities
- Skilled at piloting vehicles such as airplanes, boats, and cars, although may not be able to tolerate flying, boating, or driving
- May be prone to motion sickness, barring early and/or consistent exposure over time
- Extreme startle response upon unexpected movements, such as on roller coasters
- Fear of heights Terrified by moving backwards or tilting backwards, such as when driving up an incline in a car or in a wheelchair
- May trip, stumble, or fall due to proprioceptive deficits and/or hypermobility and quickly right self / recover before hitting the ground, another object, etc.
Seeking
- Desire for accelerations, such as being slung, spun, swinging, jumping on a trampoline, etc.
- Fascination and/or comfort while spinning, jumping, or otherwise accelerating, such as takeoff in an airplane, zip-lining, or going over a hill fast enough to feel the "drop"
- May obsessively engage in sports, piloting, theme parks, etc.
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