Lying in bed at night, one of the worst sounds a person can hear is the buzz of a nearby mosquito. Concentrating on the buzzing might keep you from falling asleep, but it also seems to heighten the awareness of your skin ...
Jun 2, 2011
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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
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A team of researchers at the Institute of Neurosciences of Alicante of the ISIC in Spain has found that the sense of touch arises in the brain before birth—at least in mice. In their paper published in the journal Science, ...
(Medical Xpress) -- In a first ever demonstration of a two-way interaction between a primate brain and a virtual body, two monkeys trained at the Duke University Center for Neuroengineering learned to employ brain activity ...
Oct 5, 2011
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Researchers at McGill University have discovered that a protein found in the membrane of our sensory neurons are involved in our capacity to feel mechanical pain, laying the foundation for the development of powerful new ...
Feb 24, 2020
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A newborn baby's brain responds to being touched on the face, according to new research co-led by UCL.
Nov 16, 2018
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The sense of touch can significantly affect how animals and humans perceive the world around them, enriching their experiences and allowing them to gather more information about their surroundings and other living organisms. ...
New research from McMaster University may answer a controversial question: do the blind have a better sense of touch because the brain compensates for vision loss or because of heavy reliance on their fingertips?
May 11, 2011
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More than ten percent of the cerebral cortex is involved in processing information about our sense of touch—a larger area than previously thought. This is the result of a joint study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute ...
Nov 25, 2019
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For many people, simple sensations such as the gentle caress of a loved one or walking barefoot through the grass feel pleasant. For individuals with autism, the feeling of light pressure on the skin may be perceived as aversive ...
Jun 27, 2019
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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.
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