proprioception

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Proprioception

The sense of position and movement of the limbs and the sense of muscular tension. The awareness of the orientation of the body in space and the direction, extent, and rate of movement of the limbs depend in part upon information derived from sensory receptors in the joints, tendons, and muscles. Information from these receptors, called proprioceptors, is normally integrated with that arising from vestibular receptors (which signal gravitational acceleration and changes in velocity of movements of the head), as well as from visual, auditory, and tactile receptors. Sensory information from certain proprioceptors, particularly those in muscles and tendons, need not reach consciousness, but can be used by the motor system as feedback to guide postural adjustments and control of well-practiced or semiautomatic movements such as those involved in walking.

Receptors for proprioception are the endings of peripheral nerve fibers within the capsule or ligaments of the joints or within muscle. These endings are associated with specialized end organs such as Pacinian corpuscles, Ruffini's cylinders, and Golgi organs (the latter resembling histologic Golgi structures in the skin), and muscle spindles. See Cutaneous sensation, Sensation, Somesthesis

McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Bioscience. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

proprioception

[‚prō·prē·ə′sep·shən]
(physiology)
The reception of internal stimuli.
(psychology)
Sensory awareness of one's location with regard to the external environment.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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One of Joyce's kinesthetic strategies, particularly evident in "Proteus," attempts to make language mimetic of human movement in the way that onomatopoeia suggests words may sound like what they mean.
"Proteus," the third episode of Ulysses, not only revisits Stephen's aesthetic ideas from A Portrait but theorizes kinesthetic literary techniques as it features processes of creative composition, including reading, reciting, and writing.
Immediately after his reflections on the visible, audible, and kinesthetic, Stephen shuts his eyes, refusing dependence on sight and experiencing the world in body: "to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells" (3.10).
When Stephen is satisfied that the lines produce a kinesthetic feeling of "roaring wayawayawayaway," he decides to write his "moulded" breath onto a corner of the letter about "Hoof and Mouth Disease" written by Deasy in the earlier episode, "Nestor." The letter provides yet another valence to Stephen's repetition of the word mouth and experimentation with the mouthing of words.
Joyce's reading bodies and the kinesthetics of the modernist novel
They can appreciate with visceral sensitivity the kinesthetic situation of Wordsworth's encounter with the daffodils.
Wordsworth's environmental ethics

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