You’re finally home from a long day of work and feel a rumbling in your stomach. The aching emptiness insists on food, so you begin the task of preparing a dinner. Upon doing such, while lighting the stove, your hand happens to graze the blue flames. In the blink of an eye your brain is screaming “OUCH! NO! IT’S HOT!” Receiving only slight burns, your body has set off its personal alarm system, keeping you out of any major danger. Amazing how the body can respond in such a productive, lightning fast way to protect you, isn’t it? Give a big thanks to your Somatic Nervous System controlling your five somatic senses; taste, sight, smell, hearing, and touch. Within this report, however, we shall focus on just one of these senses; touch. We will unlock just how it works and the parts of the body that play a key role in the game of feeling. Diseases, conditions, and circumstances of the somatic touch sense will also be examined not failing to cover the dysfunction and issues that may take place in the system.
Let’s begin with the first major component in which plays a significant role in the ability to feel and touch; none other than the skin. Being our largest organ, the skin is extremely important to one’s survival as it protects your insides from the harsh world filled with disease and bacteria, and also is responsible for our sense of touch. Within the skin’s three layers, a massive network of touch receptors and neurons is situated called the Somatosensory System. A system of which is responsible for all of the feelings we feel physically, how can it be simple? Well, it’s not. Four different typed of receptors make us this Somatosensory System. They are listed as follows: mechanoreceptors, pain receptors, proprioceptors, and ther...
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...ritis, and the list goes on. Treatment is rather simple, yet it has no promising effects. Doctors recommend the patient to ice the wrists, keep the wrist activity down, and wear splints at night to keep pressure off of the median nerve. Because Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is progressive, the future does not look so bright for those suffering with it. Depending on the severity, surgery may be the only answer. Other than that, we can expect to see much feeling loss and pain occur as the patient ages.
Simply enough, the somatic sense of touch is quite complex and interesting as it is built upon layers of microscopic systems all interworking with one another. It’s about time we stand back and appreciate our sense of touch, because it works in its special way to keep us out of danger and hurting oneself. Touch and feeling are a truly fascinating, vital sense within our five.
Somatosensation was defined in the lab manual as the sense of touch. The four types of mechanoreceptors that were discussed in class were the Merkel complexes, Ruffini endings, Meissner’s corpuscle, and the Pacinian corpuscle (Lab Manual). The Merkel complexes were slow adapting mechanoreceptors whose primary function was to discriminate the texture, or pattern of an object (Lab Manual). The Ruffini endings were also slow adapting mechanoreceptors, but their primary function was to differentiate finger position and stable grasps (Lab Manual). The Meissner’s corpuscle was a fast adapting mechanoreceptor whose primary
Therapeutic touch was developed by Dolores Krieger and Dora Kunz in the 1970s as a non-invasive nursing intervention (Kelly et al. 2004). Jackson and Keegan (2009, p.614) defined therapeutic touch as “a specific technique of centring intention used while the practitioner moves the hands through a recipient’s energy field for the purpose of assessing and treating energy field imbalance.” The original theory of the technique proposed by nursing theorist Rogers (1970) is that individuals as a unified whole have their own permeable energy fields that extend from the skin surface and flow evenly when they are healthy. The energy field of the ill physical body is disrupted, misaligned, obstructed or “out of tune” (Huff et al. 2006). TT has the potential to re-pattern, reorganize and restore the individual’s imbalanced energy fields through the open system extending from the surface of the body interacting with the environment constantly (Krieger, 1979). The earliest studies of healing touch were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s: biochemist Bernard Grad (1965) collaborated with famous healer Oskar Estebany to demonstrate the significantly accelerated healing effects of therapeutic touch on wounded mice and damaged barley seeds. The central aim of healing therapies is to relax and calm patients in order to activate patients’ natural healing ability, and it does not include any religious activity (Lorenc et al. 2010).
The body and mind might have distinct parts of organisms that classify them as being separated, but they need that connection and communication with each other to function properly. The mind and body might have differences in structures but they are more united than they are separated. They need to interact constantly to aware us of any changes that either the mind and body have and that we might be unable to perceive. Because our mind and body are intimately interconnected, we are able feel pain, move, think , and communicate not only intimately but verbally with the entire
Touch is as essential to a healthy and happy life as eating right, getting proper sleep, and exercising. With the world growing more technological, the need for healthy human contact is more important than ever. Massage and body therapies are an age old healing refuge for us in this fast-paced, stressed-out world. The practice of massage therapy is rapidly growing in the United States. It has so much to offer and is becoming more widely accepted by doctors and the general public. Massage is touching another person by such movements as rubbing, kneading, pressing, rolling, slapping, and tapping. This type of therapy provides circulation of the blood and lymph, relaxation of muscles, relief from pain, restoration of metabolic balance, and many other benefits both physical and mental. There is much historical evidence to indicate that massage is one of the earliest remedies for pain relief and for the restoration of a healthy body. It is said to be the most natural and instinctive means of relieving pain and discomfort. Massage has proven to be an effective method for treating many conditions for thousands of years and it will continue to be used for thousands of years to come. Massage therapy is a great treatment for the body and soul.
Touch---travels through spinal cord---into medulla---left side functions of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain and the right side of the body is controlled by the left side of the brain.
Therapeutic touch can be learned by anyone. Those who wish to become practitioners take special courses. The practitioner is taught to center himself, physically and psychologically, where he can find within himself an inner reference of stability. The pupil must learn to assess the patient by feeling hot, cold, tingling, congestion or pressure sensations in his hands when gliding through another person's energy fi...
Pain is possibly the most unpleasant sensations our senses can detect. Even though we typically fail to remember what pain feels like when we are not experiencing it, we certainly do not wish to experience pain. Despite pain's unpleasantness, it has to be appreciated for what it is. Namely, a mechanism that allows us to avoid dangerous situations, to prevent further damage, and to promote the healing process. Pain allows us to remove ourselves form dangerous situations, as we attempt to move away from noxious stimuli that cause pain. As we attempt to escape stimuli that cause pain after an initial insult on our body, pain can prevent further damage form occurring. Finally, pain promotes the healing process as we take great care to protect an injured body part form further damage as to minimize the experience of more pain. How is this unpleasant, yet helpful sensation detected?
Pain, a component of the somatosensory system, is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage" (1). The perception of pain serves as a defense system to maintain homeostasis, warning of injury that should be avoided and/or treated. Injured limbs actually inhibit voluntary movement to promote necessary healing processed (2). So essential is the painful response that those individuals born with congenital pain insensitivity do not react to pain, often resulting in severe, permanent tissue damage, and even premature death.
Some clients who have experienced trauma are particularly sensitive to issues related to touch and loss of control. Healing Touch treatments can be done without physical contact and provides the client with a choice about when and how much touch is
The purpose of this experiment is to determine which body areas are well represented with touch receptors. For lab 1 (tactile localization), a student’s hypothesis was; If the marker is dotted on a palm, then this will be the most accurate tactile localization. The palm showed this characteristic partially but is not true. Based on the experiment, the palm was more accurate than half of the other locations. With the fingertip averaging 4 mm, back of the hand with 5.7 mm, the neck with 9.7 mm, then the palm of the hand with 11.4 mm and three other locations with greater average distances. So the hypothesis was incorrect, the correct hypothesis would be; “If the marker is dotted on the fingertip, then this will be the most accurate tactile localization.”
The Nervous System can be divided into two different categories, the central nervous system (CNS), and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS is made up of the brain and spinal cord, and the PNS is made up of the rest of the nerves that connect the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body. The major functions of the nervous system are sensory, integrative and motor function. The sensory function of the nervous system receives sensory receptors by detecting changes inside and outside of the body. The integrative function processes the information. Motor nerves convey information from the CNS to the body, and make the necessary response (Herlihy & Macbius, 2000).
The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and the spinal cord. The brain and the spinal cord serves as the collection section of the nerve impulses. With damage to the peripheral nervous system the central nervous wouldn’t be able to interpret the stimuli’s because they wouldn’t be able to receive them. This system is considered to be ...
With each of our senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, and hear), information is transmitted to the brain. Psychologists find it problematic to explain the processes in which the physical energy that is received by the sense organs can form the foundation of perceptual experience. Perception is not a direct mirroring of stimulus, but a compound messy pattern dependent on the simultaneous activity of neurons. Sensory inputs are somehow converted into perceptions of laptops, music, flowers, food, and cars; into sights, sounds, smells, taste ...
In a 2012 study, participants were asked to meditate using a method called Kriya Kirtan for 12 minutes a day for 8 weeks. This method consists of repeating specific sounds while touching each finger one at a time to the thumb. The nerve endings in the left hand are connected to th...
Central nervous system: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia. (n.d.). U.S National Library of Medicine. Retrieved May 22, 2014, from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002311.htm