[ELI5] If you touch an area on your body does the sensation you feel come from your fingertips or the area you touched or both?
[ELI5] If you touch an area on your body does the sensation you feel come from your fingertips or the area you touched or both?
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Both, your skin has receptors that transmit the sensation of touch. The fingertips have a much higher density of these receptors compared to many other areas of your body though so they transmit more of the feeling usually.
The feeling comes from both places — your fingertip knows it’s doing the touching, and the touched area knows it’s being touched. Your brain puts the two signals together so it all makes sense.
Both… If you touch that same part with a stick you can feel the stick toughing you.
That’s a strange question for anyone having a human body.
Both, plus your brain is pretty darn good at knowing the position of your body parts in 3D space, and that’s considered its own sense (Proprioception), so that’s going to be in play as well.
Close your eyes and try to touch your two index fingers together, and odds are you’re going to be able to do it, or at least get really close. That’s your proprioception knowing where your body parts are and knowing when they should be touching.
When you touch the kitchen counter, you feel that sensation with your hand.
When you lean the side of your body against the kitchen counter, you feel that sensation with the spot you’re leaning against.
When you touch the side of your body, you feel that sensation with your hand and you feel that sensation with the spot you’re pushing against.
Three things, really. The nerves on your fingers, the nerves on your legs, and the fact that you’re watching yourself do it. I think there’s also some kind of physiokinemetic sense? I think its related to when you need to make sure two dots are on the same point on either side of a board, you might put a finger on each dot to sense their place in 3D space when your eyes fail (you can’t look at both dots simultaneously). I digress. That was a bonus fourth thing.
The main players are the nerves, the eyes, and the agreement between the two. Your nerves might make you hallucinate sensations of touch if your eyes tell them they should be feeling a feather, for example. Interesting psychology.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=waQ1RTR_vYU