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Nerve endings in feet vs hands12/15/2023 ![]() They have more nerve endings than your arm or back. Your fingertips are far more sensitive to touch. When you want to get a good sense of how soft something is, such as a cat’s fur, you touch it with your fingers, not your arm or the back of your hand. She presented information on the new website November 16 at the Society for Neuroscience Meeting. That’s the area of our brain that responds to our sense of touch. Corlew came up with the idea for mapping our touch sensitivity as a way to teach students about their somatosensory cortex. She’s a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Neuroscience in Jupiter, Fla. Mapping how well different parts of the body respond to touch “is an easy way to get people excited about science and thinking critically,” says Rebekah Corlew. All you need is a friend, some toothpicks, a pen, paper and glue. An educational website now makes learning about these sensory systems and the brain easy. Different parts of the brain respond to the touch sensations of our fingers, arms, legs and other body parts. Main image: By Dr.WASHINGTON – Our fingertips are very sensitive to touch, much more than are our arms or legs. When you take your shoes off tonight, show your feet some love – they’re amazing! We often see our feet as simple levers that allow us to walk, however encased in your shoes your feet are actually subtle and flexible tools that enable us to do extraordinary things! This phenomenal feedback from our nerves enables us to carry out our everyday activities, without thinking about it. This ‘sixth sense’, or ‘proprioception’ includes the sense of position and movement of our limbs, the senses of muscle force and effort, and the sense of balance. Sense organs in our muscles and joints tell the brain when and exactly where our limbs are moving and how tense our muscles need to be. However our ability to sense where our body is in space is critical so we know where we are in our surroundings as well as to enable normal movement.Įven with our eyes shut we can touch our nose with any finger. We know there are the five basic senses-sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, which enable us to perceive the world around us. This remarkable nerve network is constantly transmitting this information and it takes just milliseconds for the impulses from your feet to reach your brain and for your brain to respond by making adjustments to muscles in your legs, back and arms. The sensory information from your feet not only protects from injury, but the nerve impulses received by your brain, will then in turn send messages to your muscles through the nerves to make subtle adjustments in your gait to protect bones and joints and to ensure you are moving efficiently. Standing may seem like it’s a simple task, but our nerves are relaying so many different impulses just to keep us upright – it’s this continuous feedback system between the soles of our feet up to our brain and then signals back to the muscles which are constantly detecting minute changes that allows us to balance. When standing and walking, the sole of your foot is the only part of your body in touch with the ground. Once the receptors are activated, a series of nerve impulses is triggered and transmitted to your brain. This is possible because the skin on our feet contains an extensive network of nerve endings and touch receptors, which make them sensitive to many different kinds of stimuli such as pressure, temperature, vibrations or pain. ![]() However they are incredible, they act like our internal radio, constantly transmitting information to our brains with each step we take. It’s easy to think of our feet as ugly, smelly, embarrassing attachments at the end of our legs that do nothing else but hold us upright. Did you know there are more nerve endings in your feet than anywhere else in your body? ![]()
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