Posted by 
There are 6 main senses, each with a variety of sub-modalities that get filtered by your thalamus. If your thalamus is not working properly you will get sensory overload as it allows too much sensors into your cortex. This is commonly found in people with ADHD, Autism, people with brain trauma and more.
My son has sensory processing disorder, sensory sensitivity is just one form of thalamus issue the other end of this is sensory craving. Children with ADHD are more likely to be cravers then avoiders, Always needing more sensory stimulations rather than being overwhelmed by it. More information can be found on spdstar.org specifically here https://www.spdstar.org/sites/default/files/publications/2.%20May-June%202012%20-%20Focus%20on%20SC.pdf
Madelyn has chosen to do her project on sensory cells and how they detect information that helps our five senses and also focuses on sensory overload. Sensory overload is what happens when a person receives more information from the five senses than the brain can process. In her essay, she goes through and explains gustation (taste), olfaction (smell), audition (hearing), somatosensation (touch), and vision (sight) and also goes deeper into those senses by including each of their submodalities. For example gustation has four primary taste submodalities which are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, fats and umami; submodalities of smell are smells that are offensive or pleasant, strong or light smell; submodalities for hearing are mono vs stereo sounds, tonalities, and sound quality; the submodalities of touch are temperature, pressure, vibrations, itch and pain; the submodalities of sight are color reception, brightness, contrast, size, depth (distance). She then goes into how the brain filters senses by passing through the thalamus and when this filter isn’t working, the brain isn’t able to decide which sensory information is important and the person has sensory overload. She then ends the essay with examples of sensory overload which occurs in people who have schizophrenia, ADHD, dementia, PTSD and other brain traumas which hinders their ability to filter out sensory information and how dangerous that can be. Madelyn’s essay is accompanied by an awesome piece of artwork she drew. It shows the five main senses and also a sixth sense of what she labeled as balance however, I’m not sure if balance is the word she was looking for. The sixth sense that humans have is the brain’s awareness of where our body is in space and is called proprioception. Balance is an important part of proprioception so you can say that it’s a sense but it also has a part in many other parts of the body including hearing so I don’t think balance itself is a sense.