Touch

Receptors and Sensory Processing: Understanding how receptors in our skin, muscles, and organs process physical stimuli and send signals to the brain.

Nervous System and Sensory Integration: Understanding how the nervous system integrates and interprets information from various sensory modalities, such as touch, vision, and hearing.

Somatosensation and Proprioception: Understanding the sensory system responsible for processing touch and pressure, as well as the sense of where our body is in space.

Mechanoreceptors and Tactile Sensation: Understanding the types of mechanoreceptors in our skin and how they contribute to tactile sensation, such as pressure, vibration, and texture.

Temperature Sensation: Understanding how our skin detects temperature stimuli and how the brain interprets these signals as hot or cold.

Pain Perception: Understanding how the body detects and responds to pain stimuli, as well as the psychological factors that influence our perception of pain.

Attention and Perception: Understanding how attentional processes influence sensory perception, including touch and other modalities.

Development of Touch and Perception: Understanding the developmental processes involved in the emergence and refinement of touch and perception from infancy through adulthood.

Social Touch: Understanding the role of touch in interpersonal communication, social bonding, and emotional regulation.

Disorders of Touch and Perception: Understanding the neurological and psychological disorders that can lead to sensory deficits or distortions in touch and perception.

Pressure Touch: Refers to the sensation of pressure felt when an object comes into contact with the skin. It is produced by the receptors located in the dermis or tissue beneath the skin.

Temperature Touch: The feeling of cold or warm sensations, experienced through the thermoreceptors.

Painful Touch: Unpleasant sensation experienced when there is tissue damage. Painful touch or nociceptors can be activated by mechanical, chemical or thermal stimuli.

Gentle Touch: Light touch is perceived when contact is made with the skin's receptors called Merkel cells.

Itch Touch: Itching sensation that is carried out by more than one nerve fibers, specialized for sensing different types of itching which can itch or scratch.

Tickling Touch: A form of touch involving moving vibratory sensation, which is highly sensitive with different threshold levels.

Vibratory Touch: The sensation of pressure on the skin that is produced when something vibrates and stimulates the receptors in the skin.

Kinesthetic Touch: The feeling of the position and movement of the body parts; proprioception, refers to the awareness of how our body parts are oriented relative to each other and the environment.

Magnetic Touch: Recent studies have shown that some animals like birds and marine animals can sense magnetic fields via magnetoreceptors used for navigation.

Haptic Touch: Generally refers to the sense of touch when interacting with objects in a virtual or augmented reality environment, enhancing and simulating other touch sensations.