THE SENSE OF TOUCH The sense of touch can be broken down into four distinct skin sensations: pressure, warmth, cold, and pain → like the other senses, the sense of touch involves receptor cells converting physical stimuli into a psychological experience

THE SENSE OF TOUCH → stimulated nerves related to specific patches of skin carry information to the spinal cord and brainstem, where they cross over, go through the thalamus, and then to the somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobe

PAIN Pain serves an important function: it warns us that something has gone, or potentially will go, wrong…you wouldn’t want to live without it, but neither do you want constant chronic pain → like other senses, pain perception is subjective (as seen by placebo effects) and determined by a variety of influences

PAIN PERCEPTION Biological: the gate-control theory suggests the spinal cord has a neurological ‘gate’ that can open and close letting pain messages through or stopping them → signals from either the nerve fibers or the brain can close the gate

PAIN PERCEPTION → endorphin production, which can vary genetically, helps modulate pain

PAIN PERCEPTION Psychological: being distracted from our pain can diminish or temporarily remove it → the pain-relieving effects of endorphins and distractions are evidence of the brain ‘closing’ the gate from above

PAIN PERCEPTION Social-Cultural Influences: sometimes the pain in sprain is mainly in the brain; being with others in pain (increase), feeling empathy for others’ (increase), viewing pleasant pictures (decrease) and our own cultural/personal willingness to tolerate pain, can affect our perception

PAIN PERCEPTION * Our senses don’t operate independently, sensory interaction/integration is the norm, as when smell influences taste and vision influences sound (the McGurk effect)

BODY POSITION AND MOVEMENT Kinesthesia refers to your system for sensing the position and movement of body parts → vision interacts with sensors in your joints, tendons and muscles to keep us steady

BODY POSITION AND MOVEMENT Related to kinesthesia is our Vestibular Sense which monitors the head’s – and thus the body’s – movement and position to give us balance → the semicircular canals and vestibular sacs in the inner ear contain fluid that moves with the body and send messages to the cerebellum