science

definition of touch

Touch is one of the five sensory senses that human beings have and the one that allows us to detect, perceive, distinguish the qualities that objects and the environment have, such as temperature, pressure, roughness, softness, roughness, among others.

The sense of touch it is found preeminently on our skin which is where most of the nerve receptors are found that transform the stimuli that come to us from the outside world and that once they are converted into information, the brain is ready to interpret them as cold, heat, humidity, dry, wet and the characteristics that usually present some surfaces and that before we mentioned as roughness, softness, hardness.

The main nerve receptors for touch that are responsible for the function described above are the so-called corpuscles of touch or Meissner and the corpuscles or Merkel discs, which are nothing more than small nerve cells specialized in this task and located in the different layers of our skin.

Meissner cospuscles are very small, between 50 and 100 microns and are located in strategic areas such as the lips, fingertips, nipples, the palm of the hand and in those other areas where there are no hairs. These are what allow us to recognize the area touched and identify the various textures of the objects we touch.

And on the side of Merkel's corpuscles, they deal with reception under pressure, they are mainly concentrated in the area of ​​the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet.

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