We have all gawped at the likes of Simone Biles, Misty Copeland, and Novak Djokovic wondering how their bodies can achieve the seemingly impossible.
Even scientists are baffled by their balance, control, and swift reactions.
But a new study sheds light on a gene that strengthens that ability.
In a nutshell, they have an incredibly strong ‘sixth sense’.
Simone Biles has an extraordinary sense of her body – likely controlled by a specific gene
Scientists at the National Institute of Health are investigating this gene (PIEZO2) to see how it contrls touch and proprioception, a ‘sixth sense’ of awareness of one’s body in space
The gene – known as PIEZO2 – is not a new discovery; it was first mentioned in medical journals years ago.
However, scientists were not aware how much we relied on it to control touch and proprioception, a ‘sixth sense’ describing awareness of one’s body in space.
Now, scientists at the National Institute of Health are exploring how this gene could be stronger in some people than others.
Their research stems from a study of two unrelated patients – one aged nine, one aged 19 years old – who are lacking the gene.
Mutations in the gene caused the two to have movement and balance problems and the loss of some forms of touch.
Misty Copeland, the revered ballet dancer, is another with incredible control of her body
The girls – who are involved in the NIH’s wider study of genetic mutations – have difficulties walking, with hip, finger and foot deformities, and abnormally curved spines.
Despite their difficulties, they both appeared to cope with these challenges by relying heavily on vision and other senses.
Of course, Simone Biles uses vision and other senses, too, to land a triple back flip.
But the 19-year-old Olympic gymnast undoubtedly has something else that helps her brain engineer her body to perform such moves.
To explore what this gene is, researchers got the two girls in the study to go through a series of spatial awareness tests.
They found that without vision they lost almost all sense of what their body was doing.
Blindfolding them caused them to stumble from side to side while trying to walk.
Assistants had to prevent them from falling.
Compared with unaffected volunteers, the young patients found it harder when blindfolded to reliably reach for an object in front of their faces than it was for the volunteers.
And they could not guess the direction their joints were being moved as well as the control subjects could without looking.
The girls also struggled to feel vibrations from a buzzing tuning fork as well as the control subjects could.
Brain scans of one patient showed no response when the palm of her hand was brushed with a metal object.
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In some cases, they did feel things. But their reactions were different.
All of the control patients said it felt nice when hairy skin was brushed against the palm of their hand.
One of the two core patients, however, said it felt prickly and unpleasant.
Her brain scans also showed different activity patterns to unaffected patients during this test.
Nonetheless, both girls had normal nervous systems, they could feel pain, itch, and heat, and their brain function was normal.
It suggests that one small gene mutation solely dictates this elusive ‘sixth sense’.
‘Our study highlights the critical importance of PIEZO2 and the senses it controls in our daily lives,’ said Dr Carsten G. Bönnemann, senior investigator at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).
‘The results establish that PIEZO2 is a touch and proprioception gene in humans.
‘Understanding its role in these senses may provide clues to a variety of neurological disorders.’