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Scientists Say You Have a Sixth Sense, and It Could Affect Your Mental Health

Interoception helps your brain read internal signals like hunger, heart rate, and tension, and problems with it may affect mood and anxiety.

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Most people can name five human senses without thinking too hard. Almost no one can name the sixth, which researchers are increasingly convinced plays a significant role in mental health.

It’s called interoception, and it’s the body’s ongoing system for reading its own internal signals—heart rate, hunger, breathing, gut sensation, muscle tension. Psychologists Jennifer Murphy of Royal Holloway, University of London, and Freya Prentice of University College London describe it as an “extremely important sense” that keeps the body’s systems in balance and alerts people when something is off. It also, as a growing body of research suggests, does tons of background work in regulating........

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