Touch: Position, Movement, and the Skin Senses

1. Touch: Position, Movement, and the Skin Senses Rebecca Dalton RayvantKohli Jenna Raithel Megan Saracino IrshamZaman

2. Essential Questions • What are the difference between the different senses of  touch? • Define vestibular, kinesthetic, and cutaneous sense. • How does kinesthetic sense work? • What are some common sensory disorders related to touch?

3. Types of Senses • Vestibular Sense • Structures of the inner ear that registers the orientation of the head • Kinesthetic Sense • Ability to perceive extent, direction, or weight of movement • Cutaneous Sense • Faculty by which external objects or forces are perceived through contact with the body

4. Vestibular Sense • Inner ear • The semicircular canals and cochlea • Form the organs of balance and hearing • Embedded in the temporal bone • Semicircular canals • Three fluid-filled bony channels in the inner ear • Utricle • A small cell, sac, or bladder like protuberance in an animal or plant • Somatosensory (sensory) cortex • A brain region that processes information coming from the muscles, joints, and skin

5. Kinesthetic Sense • What is it? • The sense that detects bodily position, weight, or movement of the muscles, tendons, and joints • Interlaces with Proprioception • Examples • Falling • Raising your hand • Kicking a ball • Phantom Limb Sensation • Sensation that an amputated or missing limb (even an organ, like the appendix) is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts

6. Cutaneous Sense • Pain • A feeling of marked discomfort in a particular part of the body • Physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury • Body’s adaptive response to conditions that threaten your body • Control theory • A theory which sees crime as the outcome of an imbalance between impulses towards criminal activity and controls which deter it • Cutaneous receptors • Sensory receptor found in the dermis or epidermis • Part of the somatosensory system • Include e.g. cutaneous mechanoreceptors, nociceptors (pain) and thermoreceptors (temperature)

7. Cutaneous Sense (2) • Gate control theory • Proposes pain is modulated by a spinal gate that determines whether a pain signal is allowed to go on to the brain. • Mechanoreceptors • A sense organ or cell that responds to mechanical stimuli such as touch or sound • Thermoreceptors • a sensory receptor that responds to heat and cold • Nocioreceptors • responds to potentially damaging stimuli by sending nerve signals to the spinal cord and brain

8. Cutaneous Sense (3) • Acupuncture • System of complementary medicine that involves pricking the skin or tissues with needles • Used to alleviate pain and to treat various physical, mental, and emotional conditions. • Lamaze method • Method that prepares a mother for natural childbirth • Pregnant woman (in classes and at home) practices (usually with the help of a coach) and learns about the physiology of: • Childbirth • Techniques of relaxation • Concentration • And breathing

9. Sensory Disorders • Congenial Insensitivity to Pain • Connection between nerves that sense pain and brain’s recognition of pain is missing so people cannot feel pain • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-Gd-pG-cDI • Sensory Processing Disorder • Condition that exists when sensory signals don’t get organized into appropriate responses