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Sensation and Perception > Touch and Pain > Flashcards

Touch and Pain Flashcards

1
Q

What is skin?

A

The largest sense organ in the body

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2
Q

What is the area and weight of skin?

A
  • Area = 1.8 m^2

- Weight = 5 kg

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3
Q

What are the two types of skin?

A
  • Glabrous – palms of hands and feet

- Hair – everywhere else in the body

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4
Q

What is the physiology of skin senses?

A
  • Stimulus contacts the skin
  • Receptor in skin fires
  • Signal travels to the brain via the spinal cord
  • Signal reaches somatosensory cortex on opposite side of the body
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5
Q

What are some skin sensations?

A
  • Touch (mechanical stimuli)
  • Pain
  • Body sense (proprioception)
  • Temperature
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6
Q

What are the different types of tactile receptors?

A
  • Merkel’s disc
  • Messner corpuscle
  • Ruffini organ (deeper in the skin)
  • Paccinian corpuscle (deeper in the skin)
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7
Q

What do Merkel’s disc receptors detect?

A

Fine details (e.g. braille)

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8
Q

What do Meissner corpuscle receptors detect?

A

Flutter (e.g. object slipping through fingers)

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9
Q

What do Ruffini organs detect?

A

Stretching, e.g. due to picking up something

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10
Q

What do Paccinian corpsucle receptors detect?

A

Vibration, fine texture e.g. using a tool

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11
Q

Why do we have multiple receptor types?

A

Many receptors = detect many types of information (c.f. rods and cones)

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12
Q

What can a single stimulus activate?

A

Many different receptor systems

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13
Q

What is the receptive field?

A
  • The area of skin that a particular cell receives information about
  • Paccinian corpuscles have larger receptive fields than Meissner’s corpuscles
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14
Q

What is the two point threshold and what affects it?

A
  • Two point threshold – the smallest separation of 2 separate but adjacent points of stimulation on the skin that just produces two distinct impressions of touch
  • Finger tip 2mm
  • Arm 3.5 cm
  • Number of receptors (how close together they are) affects to point threshold (closer the receptors then the lower the threshold)
  • Amount of space in primary somatosensory cortex is much larger for certain body parts (leads to lower two point threshold)
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15
Q

Give features of the fingertip

A
  • More receptors
  • ‘fovea’ of the skin
  • Acuity can change with experience e.g. Braille readers, musicians
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16
Q

What is active touch and what is passive touch?

A
  • Active touch: active exploration of environment

- Passive touch: body is stationary (something lands on your skin)

17
Q

What are advantages of active touch?

A
  • More parts of body contact object
  • You can search for the most diagnostic parts of objects to feel
  • Kinaesthetic senses are also engaged
18
Q

What cues do you use when perceiving texture?

A
  • Spatial cues – bumps and grooves, when finger is stationery or moving
  • Temporal cues – only when move finger across surface
     Paccinican corpuscles – adaption to high frequencies impairs performance (when they are taken out impairs our performance in perceiving texture)
     Can perceive texture via a tool (e.g. a pen)
19
Q

What is the double dissociation for what and where processing?

A

 Tactile agnosia: cannot identify objects by touch, but no problems with spatial processing
 Tactile extinction without problems in object recognition

20
Q

When patients felt for objects when being scanned what areas of the brain were activated when they described what the activity was and where the activity was?

A
  • What object was
     Activity in primary and secondary somatosensory cortex
  • Where object was
     Activity in superior parietal areas (known for processing space – auditory and visual stimuli too)
21
Q

What are top-down influences on touch?

A
  • Must update as move body position
  • Emotional effect – the same sensation may be pleasurable or unpleasant
  • Expectation, surprise – tickling
22
Q

Why can’t you tickle yourself?

A
  • Can predict consequences of one’s own action

- Same touch rated as more ticklish when produced by experimenter rather than self

23
Q

What was the old view on pain?

A

That it was overstimulation of any system

24
Q

Now what do we know we have that detects pain?

A

Nocieceptors - receptors for pain

25
Q

What are the two types of pain?

A
  • A delta fibres – fast pain (sharp): pin prick, pinches, extreme temperature
  • C fibres – slow pain (dull) – many types of pain (mild stimulation can be pleasurable) – unmyelinated
  • Same stimulus can activate both systems
26
Q

Pain is more than just receptor activity. What else is pain affected by and when else does it occur?

A
  • Be affected by a person’s mental state
     E.g. battlefield analgesia (not notice pain on the battlefield)
  • Occur in the absence of stimulation
     E.g. phantom limb pain
  • Be affected by attention
27
Q

What does gating of pain in the spinal cord influence?

A

Influences degree to which painful information reaches the brain

28
Q

What can pain be reduced by?

A
  • Non-painful tactile inputs (massage, rubbing)

- Top-down input (expectations etc.)

29
Q

What is a phantom limb?

A
  • After a limb is amputated, patient may feel a ‘phantom limb’ in its place
  • There is no external stimulus, but patient still perceives the ‘limb’
30
Q

What is proprioception?

A
  • Where your body is in space
     Signals from muscles
  • Also can use other modalities – vestibular system, tactile receptors etc.
  • Also kinesthesis – movement of limbs in space
31
Q

What happened with the man who lost his body?

A
  • IW lost most proprioception, kinesthesis and touch due to viral infection at age 19
  • Learned, over 3 years, to compensate using only visual information
  • Unable to move if it is dark
  • Lost fast myelinated fibres – retained slow C fibres
32
Q

What receptor is used for light sensations of pleasant touch?

A

CT (C tactile)

Sensation and Perception (11 decks)

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