How come when you touch something...(read more)?

Question

How come when you touch something, you feel it where you touched something? Like, if I type, my finger tips feel it...but how? If the nerves send impulses to the brain when you feel/touch than how come you have the sense of feeling where you touched???

Answer 1

The impulses travel incredibly fast...like 1000 can be sent in just one second. so your fingers are still in the same place as when they were touched and the impulse was triggered.

think of it this way...suppose you touch a hot stove. does it take long for you to realize that your hand is burning, and to move your hand? well, as soon as you touch it, an impulse is sent to the inter neuron in your brain, which processes it, and sends another impulse to your hand. so in that tiny tiny time 2 impulses were sent and some processing was done

Answer 2

It happens due to the sympathetic nervous system in the body. The neurons are spread throughout the body, in each and every body part. When we touch something, the neuron of that part sends impulse to the brain via the nerves formed by the nerve cells. It gets registerd in the brain and it redirects the msg to that part of the body. This all happens in less than a millisecond. It is like sending data to computer and receiving the information right back. The received impulse makes us feel the thing that is touched by us.

Answer 3

To put it simply an impulse travels to the brain telling it you touched something then another impulse travels to the nerve endings of the fingers giving you the sensation of touch. The amazing thing is that even touching something causes an explosion of synaptic activity inside the brain and a single touch can cause literally millions of nerve impulses.

Answer 4

You feel anything you touch because you have pressure receptors in your skin. When you touch something, it causes the receptors to fire action potentials in the sensory nerve to which they are attached. This sends the message to the brain, so you know what's happening to your body at all times. Some places are much more sensitive than other, because they have more receptors per unit area. You can test this with the "two point" test. Take two pins (try not to stick your self - they should be blunt!) and have a friend put one or both of them different distances apart on your back, your legs, your fingertips and your lips. You will be able to tell when s/he is applying two pins (instead of just one) much closer together on your finger tips and lips than other places in your body. This is because of the additional receptors, and because a much larger area of the brain is devoted to "feeling" in those parts of the body.

Answer 5

Dis-associative, are we?
It's a imaging response, that at some point, probably in the womb, starts to kick in. The brain from what I have been told, (as I have also been told I have none) associates the impulses from the touch, to a figurative image. Case and point is the implantation of electrodes to allow the blind to "see".
Hope this gives you some places to look.

Answer 6

Uh nerves sending impulses to the brain.

Answer 7

The brain has a map of your body. When the receptors of your fingers get excited by the touch, the corresponding finger lights up in your brain. We call that part of the brain the sensory cortex, and it has a picture of your body, although if you see it it looks distorted. one of the largest parts of that picture is your fingertip. Your lips as well. The picture of your body in the brain is called the humunculus, and if you get to see a picture of it I think it would make you giggle looking at all the distorted parts.

Answer 8

i have no ideal but i think is an execellent question and i cant wait to see other ans it.