Question

Somatosensation is more than one thing. How many sub-senses are there in the sense of touch (not including temperature, kinesthesia and proprioception)? What are the receptors for each of these and what are the distinguishing characteristics of each receptor or channel?

Answer 1

Touch, or somatosensory is a perception resulting from activation of neural receptors which is generally in the skin. It including hair follicles and a variety of pressure receptors respond to variations in pressure (firm, brushing, sustained, etc.).The somatosensory system is a diverse sensory system that is spread through all major parts of our body. At its simplest, the system works when there is an activity in a sensory receptor is triggered by a specific stimulus. This signal eventually passes to an area in the brain that is uniquely attributed to that area on the body and this allows the processed stimulus to be felt at the correct location.

Touch Sub-senses : Touch is one of the main senses. It can be called the sense of body or the sense of touch. The system also has internal sensory receptors and includes sensing temperature and pain. There is a special area in the brain used to processing input of touch. It is in the parietal lobe of the cerebral cortex.

Tiny touch sense organs under the skin help animals feel hardness, softness, and sharpness, for example. Animals also have sense organs which feel temperature and pain. Some parts of the body, such as fingertips have many more sense organs than others. nerve fibres attached to the sense organ sends messages to the brain through the central nervous system. The brain interprets the messages, and feel things.

Touch receptors : Within the somatosensory system, there are four main types of receptors: mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, pain receptors, and proprioceptors.

1. Mechanoreceptors: These receptors perceive sensations such as pressure, vibrations, and texture. There are four known types of mechanoreceptors whose only function is to perceive indentions and vibrations of the skin: Merkel’s disks, Meissner’s corpuscles, Ruffini’s corpuscles, and Pacinian corpuscles. The most sensitive mechanoreceptors, Merkel’s disks and Meissner’s corpuscles, are found in the very top layers of the dermis and epidermis and are generally found in non-hairy skin such as the palms, lips, tongue, soles of feet, fingertips, eyelids, and the face.

2. Thermoreceptors: These receptors perceive sensations related to the temperature of objects the skin feels. They are found in the dermis layer of the skin. There are two basic categories of thermoreceptors: hot and cold receptors.

3. Pain receptors: These receptors detect pain or stimuli that can or does cause damage to the skin and other tissues of the body. There are over three million pain receptors throughout the body, found in skin, muscles, bones, blood vessels, and some organs

4. Proprioceptors: These receptors senses the position of the different parts of the body in relation to each other and the surrounding environment. Proprioceptors are found in tendons, muscles, and joint capsules. This location in the body allows these special cells to detect changes in muscle length and muscle tension. Without proprioceptors, we would not be able to do fundamental things such as feeding or clothing ourselves. .