I know that it involves the body seeing itself, in a way. I know that there are three constituents to the sense of having a body which is one's own: vision, balance organs (vestibular system), and proprioception. I am just trying to put this whole concept together...
2006-12-28 09:27:23 · 3 answers · asked by Rosabelle Winters 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
proprioception is just the ability to sense relative position. your ability to know when you raise your hand in the air is proprioception. vision and the vestibular system don't necessarily have anything to do with proprioception when you're talking about the extremities, but yes, they do play a role when you're talking about propriception of the whole body.
as a side note, proprioception can be altered in many simple ways. for example by performing a spinal anesthetic. the position your legs are in when the spinal kicks in is the position your body will think they are in until the spinal wears off. it's interesting to do a spinal anesthetic and have someone ask you if their legs are still up in the air because that's the position their legs were in when you did the spinal! (we do spinals in the fetal position, and afterwards when we roll them on to their backs, it feels to them like their legs are still curled up in their chests)
2006-12-28 09:58:59 · answer #1 · answered by belfus 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
To put it simply, proprioception is just the ability of the mind to 'know' what the position of a body part is without looking at it.
For instance, if you close your eyes, then lift your leg off of the ground, you have a mental picture of where your leg is relative to the other leg -- you don't need to 'see' it, becuase you have receptors in the leg that interact with the brain, and allow it to sense the position of the appendage.
Another example: if I asked you to lift your soft palate or tongue, you cannot see them, but you can use proprioception to determine what position they need to arrive at in order to be 'lifted'.
Much of what we do every day is involved with proprioception.
2006-12-28 11:53:29 · answer #2 · answered by John 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
the only thing ican tell u about that is that i don't even know this word
2006-12-28 09:31:40 · answer #3 · answered by Arnon G 2 · 0⤊ 3⤋