The Sense of Memory: Feeling Special Moments

The human mind, and its nervous system, are staggeringly impressive.

For those of us with typical sensory access, this framework is familiar:
1. Sight
2. Smell
3. Hearing
4. Touch
5. Taste

But I only recently came to appreciate that neuroscience recognizes at least five more:
1. Proprioception – the awareness of body position and movement without looking (e.g., knowing where your hand is in the dark)
2. Equilibrioception – our sense of balance and spatial orientation
3. Thermoception – sensing heat and cold
4. Nociception – perceiving pain
5. Interoception – sensing internal bodily states like hunger, thirst, heart rate, or fullness

Even more fascinating: scientists are now debating four additional senses that remain controversial but compelling:
1. Chronoception – the perception of the passage of time
2. Magnetoreception – some evidence suggests humans may perceive Earth’s magnetic fields
3. Chemoreception – the detection of chemical stimuli, such as CO₂ levels in the blood
4. Stretch receptors – in organs like the stomach and lungs to detect internal pressure or fullness

I learned all of this while researching a curious question:
Could memory be a kind of sense?

After all, some memories feel so vivid I can see them, hear them, even feel them. They can bring tears, joy, even physical reactions.

But scientifically-speaking, memory isn’t considered a “sense”—because senses perceive real-time stimuli, while memory is a reconstruction of past experience.

And yet…
Memory activates many of the same brain regions as direct perception. When we recall a moment, our minds can reimagine the light, the sound, the feeling. It’s not perception—but it’s astonishingly close.

This video is from nearly 1,000 days ago, but I still feel this moment.
I miss it. It was special.

And I’m grateful that my memory still carries its senses.