Scientists Reveal Humans Have A 'Hidden' Sixth Sense That Plays A Key Role In Health And Emotions

For most of our lives, we’ve been taught that humans only have five senses — sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch. Those are the ones that help us interact with the world around us.

But researchers at Scripps Research now believe there’s another sense quietly operating inside every one of us — one that could be even more important than the five we already know.

This additional sense, they say, doesn’t help you detect what’s happening outside your body. Instead, it keeps constant tabs on what’s going on inside it, guiding your survival in ways you probably never noticed before.

Unlike the familiar five senses, this hidden sense focuses on your inner world — and once you understand what it does, its importance becomes hard to ignore. It’s how your brain monitors your body’s internal state, tracking things like your heartbeat, blood pressure, hunger, thirst, and even stress levels.

This sense helps your body make instant decisions that keep you alive and balanced — like breathing deeper when oxygen is low, drinking when you’re dehydrated, or kicking your immune system into action when you’re unwell.

Without it, you’d lose the ability to notice or respond to your body’s most basic needs before things go wrong.

Researchers have uncovered body’s secret ‘sixth sense’ that controls vital functions Getty Stock Photo

This powerful, invisible system is known as interoception.

Professor Xin Jin, who’s leading a $14.2 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health, explained how groundbreaking this research could be. "Interoception is fundamental to nearly every aspect of health, but it remains a largely unexplored frontier of neuroscience."

Ardem Patapoutian, PhD — a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist at Scripps Research — added that scientists are still only scratching the surface when it comes to understanding this mysterious internal sense.

"It's really remarkable how little we know about these internal sensory systems compared to what we know about our external senses," he said.

"We're just now beginning to identify how these neurons gather information from our organs, to decipher the neural circuits that process that information before it goes to the brain, and to figure out what the brain does with that information."

Patapoutian’s journey into this field began with one simple yet profound question: what exactly happens to a neuron when you physically touch it?

More than a decade ago, his lab began searching for the molecules that allow nerve cells to sense touch. Using a glass probe to gently poke individual cells, his team watched how neurons responded with bursts of electrical signals — the body’s natural communication method.

To narrow things down, they started removing proteins one by one. These proteins, called ion channels, help control how cells react to physical pressure. After years of tests, they finally discovered two crucial ones responsible for the sensation of touch.

Scientists get $14 million to study mysterious internal ‘sixth sense’ Getty Stock Photo

The researchers named these channels PIEZO1 and PIEZO2. These microscopic structures turned out to be essential for how our bodies sense pressure, movement, and balance — the building blocks of physical awareness.

But what truly amazed scientists was where else they found them. PIEZO channels exist not just in the skin but also in major organs like the heart, lungs, stomach, and blood vessels. They’ve even been found in the roots of plants, suggesting a shared biological mechanism across life forms.

These discoveries laid the groundwork for the Scripps team’s deeper investigation into interoception and how it connects our mind, body, and emotions in ways we’re only starting to understand.

According to researchers, this “hidden sense” could hold the key to understanding why emotions can feel physical — why your chest tightens with anxiety or your stomach knots when you’re afraid. It also explains how your body automatically keeps things like your heartbeat and blood flow stable without you ever thinking about it.

So the next time your gut tells you something’s wrong, it might not be intuition or superstition at work — it could be your sixth sense doing exactly what it was designed to do: keeping you alive and in tune with your body.