How does one distinguish the smoothness of silk or the coarse texture of sandpaper? Individuals' sense of touch is complex, requiring circuits in the brain to process incoming information much like a computer. These circuits ...
Mar 7, 2024
0
25
The passage of time is sensed, perceived, and experienced, but—unlike for touch, vision, hearing, and olfaction—there exist no sensory receptors for time. This fact has long tantalized neuroscientists with the possibility ...
Feb 26, 2024
0
113
Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center, in collaboration with George Washington University, leveraged their understanding of auditory speech processing in the brain to enable volunteers to perceive speech through ...
May 17, 2023
0
42
Of all the heartrending phrases that came to define the deprivations of the COVID-19 pandemic, one stands out as particularly poignant: "skin hunger"—our visceral need for skin-to-skin contact.
Feb 24, 2023
0
3
Can inexpensive technologies provide a helping hand during birth? A new study in open-access journal Frontiers in Global Women's Health has revealed a low-cost sensing glove that could do just that. The researchers created ...
Jan 30, 2023
0
71
Targeting a receptor responsible for our sense of touch and temperature, which researchers have now found to be present in our colon, could provide a new avenue for treating chronic pain associated with gastrointestinal disorders ...
Dec 23, 2022
0
510
The sense of touch is essential to almost everything we do, from routine tasks at home to navigating unfamiliar terrains that may conceal dangers. Scientists have long been interested in understanding exactly how the touch ...
Nov 23, 2022
0
67
We shake cereal boxes and milk cartons to figure out if there is enough for breakfast. We can easily tell if there is enough toothpaste left in the tube, or if we have enough vitamin tablets left in a bottle. For these actions, ...
Apr 7, 2022
0
2
We have more than five senses. What you might think of as your sense of "touch" is actually a range of different sensory pathways that allow you to distinguish various types of mechanical forces, to detect changes in temperature, ...
Oct 6, 2021
0
9
Think about how often we sense touch or temperature. Perhaps its the warmth we feel when we hold a coffee cup, or the comfort we feel when hugging a loved one—these sensations are integral to our everyday lives and how ...
Oct 5, 2021
0
12
The somatosensory system is a diverse sensory system comprising the receptors and processing centres to produce the sensory modalities such as touch, temperature, proprioception (body position), and nociception (pain). The sensory receptors cover the skin and epithelia, skeletal muscles, bones and joints, internal organs, and the cardiovascular system. While touch is considered one of the five traditional senses, the impression of touch is formed from several modalities; In medicine, the colloquial term touch is usually replaced with somatic senses to better reflect the variety of mechanisms involved.
The system reacts to diverse stimuli using different receptors: thermoreceptors, mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors. Transmission of information from the receptors passes via sensory nerves through tracts in the spinal cord and into the brain. Processing primarily occurs in the primary somatosensory area in the parietal lobe of the cerebral cortex.
At its simplest, the system works when a sensory neuron is triggered by a specific stimulus such as heat; this neuron passes to an area in the brain uniquely attributed to that area on the body—this allows the processed stimulus to be felt at the correct location. The mapping of the body surfaces in the brain is called a homunculus and is essential in the creation of a body image.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
