THE SKIN SENSES- Its parts and Sensory

Functions

Skin – it contains the largest receptors of any sensory system in the human body because it covers the entire body. There are sensitive spots that are distributed in different places of the skin where one feels the primary cutaneous sensations like pressure, pain, warmth, and cold. Free nerve endings, Ruffini’s ending , Krause and Bulb, Pacinian Corpuscles, merkel’s disk and meissner’s corpuscles peritrichial are the receptors of the skin.

PARTS OF THE SKIN

1. Outer layer (Epidermis)

2. Intermediate layer (Dermis) 3. Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue

Functions of the Skin or the Sensory Functions

Sensory receptors respond to stimuli and transmit data about them to the brain. In the skin, receptors detect touch, pressure, vibration, temperature, and pain. Elsewhere in the body, more specialized receptors detect light , sound, smell, and taste. Internal receptors called proprioceptors sense body position and the location of body parts in relation to each other.

Skin senses - are sensory systems for processing touch, warmth, cold, texture, and pain. They begin with external contact but then are transformed after being picked up by the nerve endings in the skin.

-is an important sense which enhances a person’s chances for survival. If a person were unable to respond to pain or pressure stimuli, for example, it would be possible for him to be covered by wounds and bruises before he becomes aware that he has been hurt because his sense of touch which would ordinarily warm him is absent.