Week 5 Cutaneous Senses

Question 1

What is the cutaneous system responsible for?

Answer 1

It allows us to feel physical stimuli such as pressure, vibration, and texture providing feedback about objects and body positioning, and warning signals to protect the body

Question 2

What are mechanoreceptors and their function ?

Answer 2

Mechanoreceptors are skin receptors sensitive to mechanical deformation such as pressure, stretching and vibration

Question 3

What are the four types of mechanoreceptors?

Answer 3

Merkel receptors
Ruffini cylinders
Meissner corpuscles
Pacinian corpuscles

Question 4

How do receptive fields vary among mechanoreceptors?

Answer 4

Ruffini SA2 and pacinian receptors RA2 have large receptive fields, while Markel SA1 and meissner RA1 receptors have smaller receptive fields

Question 5

What are the two main pathways from the skin to the brain?

Answer 5

The medical lemniscal pathway (touch and limb position) and the spinothalamic pathway (pain and temperature)

Question 6

What is the role of somatosensory cortex in touch perception?

Answer 6

It processes signals from the skin in the parietal lobe and organizes them into maps of the body, known as the homunculus

Question 7

What is the homunculus?

Answer 7

A map in the somatosensory cortex that represents body parts, with more sensitive areas like hands occupying larger portions of the

Question 8

How is the tactile acuity measured?

Answer 8

By determining the smallest distance between two points on the skin where a person can still feel them as separate

Question 9

Which mechanoreceptor is associated with perceiving vibration?

Answer 9

The pacinian corpuscle, which responds to high rates of vibration

Question 10

What is the duplex theory of texture perception?

Answer 10

Proposed by David Katz, it states that we use both spatial cues (bumps) and temporal cues (motion across texture) to perceive texture

Question 11

Why are the exploratory procedures In haptic perception?

Answer 11

Lateral motion(texture) pressure (texture) enclosure (shape) and contour following (shape)

Question 12

How do mechanoreceptors help in shape perception?

Answer 12

Multiple mechanoreceptors are activated by an object, with those at the point of contact responding most strongly, informing the brain about the objects curvature