Essay on Sensory System and Receptors

Submitted By Lynnjb23021
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The smallest density of touch receptors increases from left to right but then it decreases. The density of touch receptors varies in different parts of our bodies. Some parts may be more sensitive than others. The data showed that there’s less sensory receptor in the fingers such as the thumb, middle, and the little finger. However the nose had the highest touch receptor and was more sensitive. The brain identifies which part of the body and can determine how fast specific receptors can respond due to one of the control systems in our body which is the nervous system.

Figure 1.1 Relationship between the response of the sensory receptors on a certain body part and the area on the somatosensory cortex was used as a comparison. The smallest density of touch receptors increases from left to right but then it decreases. The sensory on the fingers doesn’t have much touch receptors such as the thumb, middle, and little fingers. However the nose had the highest touch receptor and was more sensitive.

Discussion Our skin contains touch receptors which surrounds our entire body. The receptors respond to stimuli in different ways such as mechanical, chemical, and thermal stimuli. The sense of touch is critical for hand dexterity that allows mammals to recognize and grasp objects (Lumpkin, E.A. 2011). The nervous system is one of the controller systems of the body which notifies response signals and action which deals with the movement of the body. The primary indicator of the touch receptors is the mind. Each of the receptors has information that is carried from the brain to where the information is processed and then is interpreted. The brain is considered the body identifier which tells what have been touched and what item has touched the body due to the brain consisting of a map. The map reveals a great amount of touch receptors in certain parts of the body in which the receptors respond when homeostasis is disturbed. The purpose of this experiment was to determine the density of an individual’s touch receptors in various parts of the body and to create a map of how your somatotopic map compares to your standard figure and motor homunculus. The Homunculus is the mapping of our brain which consists of the somatosensory cortex which indicates the sensor receptors of certain parts of the body. There are two types of homunculus the sensory and the motor homunculus.
A man made caliper which was made by a ruler and two toothpicks, it was given to determine a distance sensed between two points of touch which indicated the density of the receptors with a sense of touch. A variety of morphologically and electrophysiologically distinct mechanoreceptor neurons are dispersed in mammalian skin, often intimately tethered to surrounding tissue or structures such as sensory hair follicles, which indicates which part of our body is more sensitive than the other (Driscoll, M., Tavernarakis, N. 2000). Each subject were supposed to be blind folded while another person presses the point on the subjects hand until the subject can no longer feel two separated pins throughout a list of specific parts of the body (left and right parts for the limbs). Specific areas of the somatosensory cortex are committed to sensing specific body parts which is inversely proportional to the sensory receptors density in that specific part of the body shown in figure 1.1. There was a huge difference from distance observed between the responses of sensory receptors compared to the