Your new post is loading...
We were all taught as children that there are 5 senses: sight, taste, sound, smell, and touch. The initial four senses utilize clear, distinct organs, such as the eyes, taste buds, ears, and nose, but just how does the body sense touch exactly? Touch is experienced over the entire body, both inside and outside. There is not one distinct organ that is responsible for sensing touch. Rather, there are tiny receptors, or nerve endings, around the entire body which sense touch where it occurs and sends signals to the brain with information regarding the type of touch that occurred. As a taste bud on the tongue detects flavor, mechanoreceptors are glands within the skin and on other organs that detect sensations of touch. They’re known as mechanoreceptors because they’re designed to detect mechanical sensations or differences in pressure.
Role of Mechanoreceptors
A person understands that they have experienced a sensation once the organ responsible for discovering that specific sense sends a message to the brain, which is the primary organ that processes and arranges all of the information. Messages are sent from all areas of the body to the brain through wires referred to as neurons. There are thousands of small neurons that branch out to all areas of the human body, and on the endings of many of these neurons are mechanoreceptors. To demonstrate what happens when you touch an object, we will use an example.
Envision a mosquito lands on your arm. The strain of this insect, so light, stimulates mechanoreceptors in that particular area of the arm. Those mechanoreceptors send a message along the neuron they are connected to. The neuron connects all the way to the brain, which receives the message that something is touching your body in the exact location of the specific mechanoreceptor that sent the message. The brain will act with this advice. Maybe it will tell the eyes to look at the region of the arm that detected the signature. And when the eyes tell the brain that there’s a mosquito on the arm, the brain may tell the hand to quickly flick it away. That’s how mechanoreceptors work. The purpose of the article below is to demonstrate as well as discuss in detail the functional organization and molecular determinants of mechanoreceptors.
Touch is considered to be one of the most complex senses in the human body, particularly because there is no specific organ in charge of it. Instead, the sense of touch occurs through sensory receptors, known as mechanoreceptors, which are found across the skin and respond to mechanical pressure or distortion. For more information, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at (915) 850-0900.