Cutaneous Sensation and Perception
Epidermal Nerve Fibers and Heat Pain Perception Summary This study illustrated the investigation of coupling a small proportion of the primary sensory neurons to be gauged by using skin biopsy's on the perception of heat pain and analyzing painful stimuli with an fMRI signal during a scan (Tseng et al., 2015). This indicates the cutaneous nerves (specific nerves) that are activated along the pain route to see if there is a relationship between the brain response, such as an emotional experience of touch, pain, or temperature interpretation to be an internal pain or external threat stressors along with what is being sent to the dorsal horn spinal cord neurons which could be inhibitory and excitatory fibers moving downward (Tseng et al., 2015).
There were nineteen right-hand participants with no medical issues; eight men and nine women aged 26-70 (Tseng et al., 2015). The methods used for the participants in the study were the measurements of epidermal nerve fiber density, thermal stimulation, experimental paradigm, fMRI data acquisition, fMRI data analysis, psychophysiological interaction, and statistical analysis. In the results, participants had a common pain sensation of the 44C stimulation by the epidermal nerves and psychophysical data, awakened brain activations in the predicted pain-related regions associated with the fMRI signals, and the pain intensity evaluations were positively correlated (Tseng et al., 2015).
Perspectives
This study illustrated significant information in maintaining the hypothesis of the correlation between peripheral afferents and pain perception, having a well-defined relationship between skin innervation and pain perception by combining functional coupling (USO, 2019). The small fibers within the spinothalamic pathway in the spin carry information of pain and temperature to the brain and the dorsal horn is the gate control model of pain perception (Goldstein, 2016).
Touch in Normal and Pathological Settings Summary, The focus of this review, is on cutaneous mechanoreceptors in the skin that are responsible for the sense of touch along with the acknowledgment of the non-neuronal cells in association with touch and pain such as Merkel cells(data suggest that these cells are essential for the sensation of normal touch) that is skin that works along with receptors that focuses on touch and hair movement to detect pain (Moehring et al. 2018). Even though touch can elicit a pleasurable sensation, this same touch can result in excruciating pain after injury due to damage to tissues and...
