Touch Stimuli

Pain is part of being alive, and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbearable, and we need to be taught that. 

Touch receptors are present in all animals, and are important in such activities as obstacle avoidance, flghting, and copulating. Many animals use tactile signals in their courtship behavior. Male turtles often stroke or scratch the female during courtship field cricket males repeatedly touch females with their antennae. 

Touch is extremely important for humans and their pets. Stroking pets has been found to have a calming effect on both the human and the pet. Touch is also important in the bonding process between mother and child. Touch also forms the sensory basis for Braille, the means of spelling words by a system of raised dots on a flat surface to enable the sightless to read. 

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On February 6th, 22 days after the first neurologic symptoms developed (and 176 days after exposure), Wetterhahn became unresponsive to all visual, verbal, and light-touch stimuli. She died on June 8,1998, 298 days after exposure. 

We tested the effects of cloacal secretions that had been aged in a sealed vial on brown tree snakes. Our bioassay measured changes in locomotion, avoidance behavior and the expression of defensive behaviors in response to touch stimuli. A blank control, freshly collected cloacal secretions and aged cloacal secretions were the stimuli used in the study. An applied aim of this study was to investigate chemical cues that might be of use in controlling the brown tree snake in its introduced habitat (Mason and Greene,... 

Association of Pain, neuropathic pain is defined as pain initiated or caused by a primary lesion, dysfunction in the nervous system". Neuropathy can be divided broadly into peripheral and central neuropathic pain, depending on whether the primary lesion or dysfunction is situated in the peripheral or central nervous system. In the periphery, neuropathic pain can result from disease or inflammatory states that affect peripheral nerves (e.g. diabetes mellitus, herpes zoster, HIV) or alternatively due to neuroma formation (amputation, nerve transection), nerve compression (e.g. tumours, entrapment) or other injuries (e.g. nerve crush, trauma). Central pain syndromes, on the other hand, result from alterations in different regions of the brain or the spinal cord. Examples include tumour or trauma affecting particular CNS structures (e.g. brainstem and thalamus) or spinal cord injury. Both the symptoms and origins of neuropathic pain are extremely diverse. Due to this variability, neuropathic pain syndromes are often difficult to treat. Some of the clinical symptoms associated with this condition include spontaneous pain, tactile allodynia (touch-evoked pain), hyperalgesia (enhanced responses to a painful stimulus) and sensory deficits. 

Sensory detection of a noxious stimulus is known as nociception. The perception of such a stimulus, nociceptive pain, is essentially the ouch pain we experience in response to a pinprick or touching a hot or very cold object. Nociceptive pain is an important physiological... 

Response to sharp sound, touch, or other startling stimulus response may range from absent, to normal, to hyperreactive, including exaggerated jerking, jumping, frantic attempts to escape, and even convulsion. 

Our ordinary waking consciousness... is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different, we may go through life without suspecting their existence but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are all there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question-for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. 

Allodynia pain that is elicited by a non-noxious stimulus—such as the touch of clothing, air movement, or a light touch of the hand—or pain when something mildly cool or warm touches the skin. 

Hyperalgesia exaggerated pain response to a mildly noxious (touch or temperature) stimulus. 

Stimulus The cause for making a nerve cell respond can be in the form of light, sounds, taste, touch, smell, temperature, etc. 

In some respects there is some similarity between cough and pain reflexes. A powerful painful stimulus such as touching a very hot surface with the hand will induce a withdrawal reflex that is not under conscious control, and this is similar to... 

Chemicals are not the only stimuli sensed by cells and organisms. Other stimuli include light, temperature, touch, etc. In all cases, the name of the response includes a prefix that describes the stimulus (chemo-, photo-, thermo-, etc.) and the suffix taxis, meaning moving towards or away from the stimulus. For example, movement directed by... 

A soisor s sensitivity indicates how much the sensor s output changes when the measured quantity changes. The term tactile refers to the sense of touch. A tactile sensor is a device that receives and responds to a signal or stimulus having to do with force. 

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