Somatosenses

• The somatosenses provide information relating to events on the skin and to events occurring within the body

  • The cutaneous senses receive various signals from the skin that form the sense of touch
    • Pressure
    • Vibration
    • Heating/cooling
    • Stimuli that damage tissue (and produce pain)
  • Kinesthesia provides information about the body position and movement
    • Kinesthetic signals arise from receptors located within the joints, tendons, and muscles

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The somatosenses include: Cutaneous (skin), kinesthesia (movement) and organic senses. The first two are better know. Organic senses have to do with sensory info from the organs, like stomachaches.

Cutaneous—Skin senses in detail. The skin responds to:

Pressure or indentations of the skin; e.g. someone’s hand on your shoulder or pulling on your arm

Vibrations are perceived by us as how rough something is; e.g. a kiss from a cat on the hand causes vibrations on our skin and we interpret as rough

Heating & cooling give us information about temperature change;

Thermoregulation allows us to sweat to reduce heat and cools the body by restricting blood circulation