Proprioceptive; Proprioception

The proprioceptive senses are, specifically, sensory nerve terminals (proprioceptors) found in muscles, tendons, and joint capsules, which give information concerning movements and position of the body. Vis.:

• proprioception (noun): the ability to sense the position and location and orientation and movement of the body and its parts. (WordNet 1.7).
• proprioceptor (noun): special nerve endings in the muscles and tendons and other organs that respond to stimuli regarding the position and movement of the body. (WordNet 1.7).
• proprioception (noun): the reception of information by proprioceptors and its interpretation. (Oxford Dictionary).
• proprioceptor (noun): a sensory receptor which receives stimuli from within the body (usually other than the gut); specifically one that responds to position and movement. (Oxford Dictionary).
• proprioception: the perception by an animal of stimuli relating to its own position, posture, equilibrium, or internal condition. (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
• proprioceptor (noun): sensory receptor, found chiefly in muscles, tendons, joints, and the inner ear, that detects the motion or position of the body or a limb by responding to stimuli arising within the organism. (The American Heritage® Dictionary).

Even more specifically:

• Four types of sensory structures are widely distributed in muscles, tendons, and joints: (1) the neuromuscular spindle consists of small, fine muscle fibres around which sensory fibre endings are wrapped; (2) the Golgi tendon organ consists of sensory nerve fibres that terminate in a rich branching encapsulated within the tendon; (3) joint receptors (as in the knee) consist of ‘spray-type’ endings (Ruffini) and Golgi-type and Pacinian corpuscles within the joints; and (4) free nerve endings. All these receptors combine to provide information on active contraction, passive stretch of muscle fibres, and tension whether produced actively or passively. (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

If one were to close the eyes and extend an arm out to the side, for instance, and then to the front there is a sensing, or perception, of where the hand is located in space in relation to the body itself ... especially when the muscles of the hand are flexed.

The sense of movement (the ability to feel movements of the limbs and body) is called kinaesthesia and the inability to sense movement is called kinanaesthesia.

Sometimes the receptors in the labyrinth (the vestibular sense organ), or inner ear, are also considered proprioceptors. The sense of balance, or equilibrium, is stimulated by gravity, rotation, and acceleration. Vis.:

• The inner ear contains parts (the non-auditory labyrinth or vestibular organ) that are sensitive to acceleration in space, rotation, and orientation in the gravitational field. (...) Unusual stimulation of the vestibular receptors and semicircular canals also can give rise to sensory distortions in visual and motor activity. The resulting discord between one’s visual and motor responses and the external space (as aboard ship in a heaving sea) often leads to nausea and disorientation (e.g., seasickness). In space flight these sensory systems usually are not stimulated except as the weightless astronaut affects them by his own movements. Such abnormal gravitational and acceleratory forces apparently contribute to the nausea or disequilibrium sometimes reported by people in outer space. (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Again, if one were to close the eyes one will find there is a sensing, or perception, of being oriented in space (of space all around including behind the body) ... and this has as much to do with balance, acceleration and/or rotation in space, orientation in a gravity field (if there be one) as it has to do with the proprioceptive senses proper in the muscles, tendons, and joints.

The proprioceptive senses are part of the somatic sensory system (somaesthesis/ somaesthesia) which is the faculty of bodily perception (sensory systems associated with the body) and includes skin senses (cutaneous receptors for hot/cold, pressure, physical pleasure/ pain, for example) and the internal organs sensors (cardiovascular or circulatory receptors for blood pressure, heart rate, and carbon dioxide and digestive tract receptors for hunger and thirst, for instance) as well as the equilibrium sense, or sense of balance, already mentioned.

Thus proprioception is the ability to sense the position and location and orientation and movement of the body, and its parts, because of the proprioceptors in the muscles, tendons, and joint capsules (in combination with the sense of balance, acceleration and/or rotation in space, and orientation in a gravitational field, of the inner ear or vestibular organ).

In other words: the sense of being here, in space, as a body is not just because of sight (visual perception), sound (auditory perception), touch (cutaneous perception), smell (olfactory perception), and taste (gustatory perception).

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