Question

• describe the concentration of touch receptors across the body and how this relates to the sense of touch.

• Comment on temperature receptors’ activity over time.

Answer 1

Concentration of touch receptors varies across the body and sensitivity(sense of touch) of a region in body is directly related to concentration of touch receptors in that region.Meissner's corpuscle is the most sensitive kind of touch receptor in the skin.Sensitive regions like fingertips,palms, tongue and lips contain high concentration of touch receptors compared to other lesser sensitive regions like thigh, calf and lower back.Fingertips may contain about 100-200 Meissner's corpuscles whereas only about 10 are found in thigh region.

Temperature receptor (thermoreceptor) is phasic receptor meaning it adapts rapidly to a stimulus but it's firing activity diminishes quickly or stops if the stimulus (new temperature) is unchanging.Thisis why, if you pour warm water over your body,first you recognize the increase in temperature,then your body quickly adapts to the new temperature.