Newly discovered cell in fruit flies is essential for touch sensation
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have uncovered a key role for a new type of cell in touch detection in the skin of the fruit fly.
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have uncovered a key role for a new type of cell in touch detection in the skin of the fruit fly.
Plants & Animals
Mar 23, 2023
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16
"As someone who is severely deaf and completely blind, I felt overnight I had lost a third sense, my sense of touch. To make matters worse, people around me faded away—voices had become so quiet that there was an eerie ...
Social Sciences
Oct 11, 2022
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1
As Meta (formerly Facebook) expands access to its virtual reality (VR) platform, disturbing accounts of women being sexually assaulted and harassed in its metaverse are also racking up.
Social Sciences
Jul 22, 2022
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38
Many disease-causing bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa crawl on surfaces through a walk-like motility known as "twitching." Nanometers-wide filaments called type IV pili are known to power twitching, but scientists ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Jul 23, 2021
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336
Tel Aviv University's new and groundbreaking technology inspires hope among people who have lost their sense of touch in the nerves of a limb following amputation or injury. The technology involves a tiny sensor that is implanted ...
Bio & Medicine
Jul 12, 2021
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242
A family of proteins that sense mechanical force—and enable our sense of touch and many other important bodily functions—also are essential for proper root growth in some plants, according to a study led by scientists ...
Molecular & Computational biology
May 14, 2021
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54
Seismic waves, commonly associated with earthquakes, have been used by scientists to develop a universal scaling law for the sense of touch. A team, led by researchers at the University of Birmingham, used Rayleigh waves ...
Mathematics
Oct 9, 2020
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499
Garrett Anderson has never known the pleasure of holding hands with both his children at the same time.
General Physics
Nov 21, 2019
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23
If it walks like a duck (or a goose or a swan), it can find food in mud without seeing or smelling it. These waterfowl bills are covered in skin that's a lot like the sensitive skin on the palms of our hands, and it can feel ...
Biochemistry
Mar 1, 2019
1
15
Picking up an apple is one of those jobs requiring the delicate touch of the human hand – or its robotic counterpart.
Robotics
Dec 12, 2014
1
0
The somatosensory system is a diverse sensory system comprising the receptors and processing centres to produce the sensory modalities such as touch, temperature, proprioception (body position), and nociception (pain). The sensory receptors cover the skin and epithelia, skeletal muscles, bones and joints, internal organs, and the cardiovascular system. While touch is considered one of the five traditional senses, the impression of touch is formed from several modalities; In medicine, the colloquial term touch is usually replaced with somatic senses to better reflect the variety of mechanisms involved.
The system reacts to diverse stimuli using different receptors: thermoreceptors, mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors. Transmission of information from the receptors passes via sensory nerves through tracts in the spinal cord and into the brain. Processing primarily occurs in the primary somatosensory area in the parietal lobe of the cerebral cortex.
At its simplest, the system works when a sensory neuron is triggered by a specific stimulus such as heat; this neuron passes to an area in the brain uniquely attributed to that area on the body—this allows the processed stimulus to be felt at the correct location. The mapping of the body surfaces in the brain is called a homunculus and is essential in the creation of a body image.
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