TOUCH Tenley Rasch

Emily Smith

Stephanie McHenry

FOUR BASIC SKIN SENSATIONS Pressure Warmth Cold Pain

FOUR BASIC SKIN SENSATIONS Cold : “I stuck my tongue to a frozen stop sign!”

Warmth: “Don’t touch the hot pizza, no matter how good it looks!”

Pressure: “How can that guy have pins stuck into his back?!”

Pain: “I stubbed my toe on the bed railing!”

SOMATOSENSORY CORTEX The area at the front of the parietal

lobes that registers and processes body touch and movement sensations

FEELING PAIN Pain is your body’s way of telling you

something has gone wrong Pain is an unpleasant sensation often

caused by intense or damaging stimuli such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone.“

BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL INFLUENCES

PAIN DEFECTS Congenital Analgesia: usually die by

early adulthoodWithout discomfort that makes us switch

positions, joints fail from excess strain, and without warning of pain, infections and injuries accumulate

Hyperalgesia: extreme sensitivity to something that others would find only mildly painful

FEELING PRESSURE Only pressure has identifiable receptors Some spots on our body are especially

sensitive to pressure Stroking adjacent pressure spots creates

a tickle

FEELING PRESSURE 500,000 sensory receptors that detect

pressure are located in the skin.  Mechano-receptors travel from the skin

to the somatosensory areas in the frontal and parietal lobes.

Women are significantly more sensitive to touch than men. (Not very shocking.)

PHANTOM LIMB SENSATION Some 7 in 10 amputees may feel

movement in nonexistent limbs The brain comes prepared with to

anticipate the fact that that it will be getting information from a body that has limbs

GATE CONTROL THEORY The theory that the spinal cord contains

a neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on into the brain. The “gate” is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in large fibers or by information coming from the brain.

GATE CONTROL THEORY Spinal cord contains small nerve

fibers that conduct most pain signals It also contains larger fibers that

conduct most other sensory signals When tissue is injured small nerve

fibers activate and open the neural gate

Large fiber activity shuts that gate Thus if you stimulate gate closing

activity by massage electrical signal or acupuncture you can disrupt the pain message.

The brain can close this gate too!

LAMAZE METHOD A method of childbirth that combines

relaxation(through deep breathing and muscle relaxation), counterstimulation (through gentle massage), and distraction (through focusing attention on, say, a nice photo). An effective way to increase pain tolerance.

ACUPUNCTURE An alternative medicine that treats

patients by insertion and manipulation of needles in the body.