Touch and Pain

Learning Objectives

  • Explain the receptors that respond to touch
  • Examine the experience of pain, including how expectations and context affect pain and touch experiences

Touch, Thermoception, and Noiception

A number of receptors are distributed throughout the skin to respond to various touch-related stimuli (Figure 1). These receptors include Meissner’s corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles, Merkel’s disks, and Ruffini corpuscles. Meissner’s corpuscles respond to pressure and lower frequency vibrations, and Pacinian corpuscles detect transient pressure and higher frequency vibrations. Merkel’s disks respond to light pressure, while Ruffini corpuscles detect stretch (Abraira & Ginty, 2013).

An illustration shows “skin surface” underneath which different receptors are identified: the “pacinian corpuscle,” “ruffini corpuscle,” “merkel’s disk,” and “meissner’s corpuscle.”
Figure 1. There are many types of sensory receptors located in the skin, each attuned to specific touch-related stimuli.

The skin can convey many sensations, such as the biting cold of a wind, the comfortable pressure of a hand holding yours, or the irritating itch from a woolen scarf. The different types of information activate specific receptors that convert the stimulation of the skin to electrical nerve impulses, a process called transduction. There are three main groups of receptors in our skin: mechanoreceptors, responding to mechanical stimuli, such as stroking, stretching, or vibration of the skin; thermoreceptors, responding to cold or hot temperatures; and chemoreceptors, responding to certain types of chemicals either applied externally or released within the skin (such as histamine from an inflammation). For an overview of the different receptor types and their properties, see Table 1.

The experience of pain usually starts with activation of nociceptorsreceptors that fire specifically to potentially tissue-damaging stimuli. Most of the nociceptors are subtypes of either chemoreceptors or mechanoreceptors. When tissue is damaged or inflamed, certain chemical substances are released from the cells, and these substances activate the chemosensitive nociceptors. Mechanoreceptive nociceptors have a high threshold for activation—they respond to mechanical stimulation that is so intense it might damage the tissue. Sensory information collected from the receptors and free nerve endings travels up the spinal cord and is transmitted to regions of the medulla, thalamus, and ultimately to somatosensory cortex, which is located in the postcentral gyrus of the parietal lobe.

Table 1. Categories of low-threshold mechanoreceptors*
Identity of receptor Size of receptor* Type of skin where found Speed of adaptation* Adequate stimulus*
Merkel’s disks small, sharp borders glabrous* slow pressure
Meissner’s corpusles small, sharp borders glabrous rapid indentation
Ruffini corpuscles large, diffuse borders hairy + glabrous slow stretching
Pacinian corpuscles large, diffuse borders hairy + glabrous rapid vibration

*Terms:

Adequate stimulus-the type of stimulus that the receptor is specialized to receive and respond to.

Glabrous skin-the hairless skin found on our palms and the soles of our feet. This skin has a higher density of receptors of a more complex range, which reflects the fact that we use these areas of our body to actively explore our surroundings and to discriminate tactile properties of objects we’re interacting with.

Low-threshold mechanoreceptors-mechanoreceptors that respond to stimulus that is so light it doesn’t threaten to damage the tissue around it. high-threshold mechanoreceptors respond to stimulation of higher intensity, and are a type of nociceptor.

Receptive field-the space of skin or tissue in which stimulation will elicit a response in the receptor. Smaller receptive fields make the receptor more sensitive to details.

Speed adaptation-slowly adapting mechanoreceptors continue to fire action potentials during sustained stimulation. Rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors continue to fire action potentials in response to stimulus onset and offset (i.e. to stimuli changes), and help detect stimulus movement on the skin.

Review Questions

Pain Perception

Pain is an unpleasant experience that involves both physical and psychological components. Feeling pain is quite adaptive because it makes us aware of an injury, and it motivates us to remove ourselves from the cause of that injury. In addition, pain also makes us less likely to suffer additional injury because we will be gentler with our injured body parts.

Life Without Pain?

Imagine a life free of pain. How would it be—calm, fearless, serene? Would you feel invulnerable, invincible? Getting rid of pain is a popular quest—a quick search for “pain-free life” on Google returns well over 4 million hits—including links to various bestselling self-help guides promising a pain-free life in only 7 steps, 6 weeks, or 3 minutes. Pain management is a billion-dollar market, and involves much more than just pharmaceuticals. Surely a life with no pain would be a better one?

Well, consider one of the “lucky few”: 12-year-old “Thomas” has never felt deep pain. Not even when a fracture made him walk around with one leg shorter than the other, so that the bones of his healthy leg were slowly crushed to destruction underneath the knee joint. For Thomas and other members of a large Swedish family, life without pain is a harsh reality because of a mutated gene that affects the growth of the nerves conducting deep pain. Most of those affected suffer from joint damage and frequent fractures to bones in their feet and hands; some end up in wheelchairs even before they reach puberty (Minde et al., 2004). It turns out pain—generally—serves us well.

Living without a sense of touch sounds less attractive than being free of pain—touch is a source of pleasure and essential to how we feel. Losing the sense of touch has severe implications—something patient G. L. experienced when an antibiotics treatment damaged the type of nerves that signal touch from her skin and the position of her joints and muscles. She reported feeling like she’d lost her physical self from her nose down, making her “disembodied”—like she no longer had any connection to the body attached to her head. If she didn’t look at her arms and legs they could just “wander off” without her knowing—initially she was unable to walk, and even after she relearned this skill she was so dependent on her visual attention that closing her eyes would cause her to land in a hopeless heap on the floor. Only light caresses like those from her children’s hands can make her feel she has a body, but even these sensations remain vague and elusive (Olausson et al., 2002; Sacks, 1985).

Generally speaking, pain can be considered to be neuropathic or inflammatory in nature. Pain that signals some type of tissue damage is known as inflammatory pain. In some situations, pain results from damage to neurons of either the peripheral or central nervous system. As a result, pain signals that are sent to the brain get exaggerated. This type of pain is known as neuropathic pain. Multiple treatment options for pain relief range from relaxation therapy to the use of analgesic medications to deep brain stimulation. The most effective treatment option for a given individual will depend on a number of considerations, including the severity and persistence of the pain and any medical/psychological conditions.

Some individuals are born without the ability to feel pain. This very rare genetic disorder is known as congenital insensitivity to pain (or congenital analgesia). While those with congenital analgesia can detect differences in temperature and pressure, they cannot experience pain. As a result, they often suffer significant injuries. Young children have serious mouth and tongue injuries because they have bitten themselves repeatedly. Not surprisingly, individuals suffering from this disorder have much shorter life expectancies due to their injuries and secondary infections of injured sites (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2013).

Link to Learning

Watch this video of a girl who feels no pain to learn more about congenital insensitivity to pain.

Action Potentials in the Receptor Cells Travel as Nerve Impulses with Different Speeds

When you step on a pin, this activates a host of mechanoreceptors, many of which are nociceptors. You may have noticed that the sensation changes over time. First you feel a sharp stab that propels you to remove your foot, and only then you feel a wave of more aching pain. The sharp stab is signaled via fast-conducting A-fibers, which project to the somatosensory cortex. This part of the cortex is somatotopically organized—that is, the sensory signals are represented according to where in the body they stem from (see Figure 2). The unpleasant ache you feel after the sharp pin stab is a separate, simultaneous signal sent from the nociceptors in your foot via thin C-pain or Aδ-fibers to the insular cortex and other brain regions involved in the processing of emotion and interoception (see Figure 3 for a schematic representation of this pathway). The experience of stepping on a pin is, in other words, composed by two separate signals: one discriminatory signal allowing us to localize the touch stimulus and distinguish whether it’s a blunt or a sharp stab; and one affective signal that lets us know that stepping on the pin is bad. It is common to divide pain into sensory–discriminatory and affective–motivational aspects (Auvray, Myin, & Spence, 2010). This distinction corresponds, at least partly, to how this information travels from the peripheral to the central nervous system and how it is processed in the brain (Price, 2000).

Somatosensory map, showing the areas in the sensory cortex that respond with the greatest sensitivity to touch. Hands, faces, and genitals are particularly sensitive.
Figure 2. The body parts are represented in specific locations on the somatosensory cortex. Representations map out somatotopically, with the feet located medially and shoulders and arms laterally to the interhemispheric fissure. Facial structures are represented in a different location to the scalp and head; the face oriented “upside-down” with the forehead pointing towards the shoulders.

Pain Is Necessary for Survival, but Our Brain Can Stop It if It Needs To

In April 2003, the climber Aron Ralston found himself at the floor of Blue John Canyon in Utah, forced to make an appalling choice: face a slow but certain death—or amputate his right arm. Five days earlier he fell down the canyon—since then he had been stuck with his right arm trapped between an 800-lb boulder and the steep sandstone wall. Weak from lack of food and water and close to giving up, it occurred to him like an epiphany that if he broke the two bones in his forearm he could manage to cut off the rest with his pocket knife. The thought of freeing himself and surviving made him so exited he spent the next 40 minutes completely engrossed in the task: first snapping his bones using his body as a lever, then sticking his fingers into the arm, pinching bundles of muscle fibers and severing them one by one, before cutting the blue arteries and the pale “noodle-like” nerves. The pain was unimportant. Only cutting through the thick white main nerve made him stop for a minute—the flood of pain, he describes, was like thrusting his entire arm “into a cauldron of magma.” Finally free, he rappelled down a cliff and walked another 7 miles until he was rescued by some hikers (Ralston, 2010).

How is it possible to do something so excruciatingly painful to yourself, as Aron Ralston did, and still manage to walk, talk, and think rationally afterwards? The answer lies within the brain, where signals from the body are interpreted. When we perceive somatosensory and nociceptive signals from the body, the experience is highly subjective and malleable by motivation, attention, emotion, and context.

Cross sections of the cortex, midbrain, medulla, and spinal cord and the pain processing pathways traveling through them.
Figure 3. Pain processing pathways. Left – Ascending pain pathways: An injury is signaled simultaneously via fast-conducting Aα or Aβ-fibres and slow-conducting C-pain or Aδ-fibres. The fast A-fibres signal pressure, stretching and other tissue movements to the somatosensory cortex via the dorsal column nuclei. The C-pain and Aδ-fibres sends pain information from nociceptors in the tissue or skin, and transmits these signals to second order neurons in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. The second order neurons then cross over to the opposite side, where they form the ascending spinothalamic tract. This tract projects signals to nuclei in the medulla and midbrain on the way up to the thalamus (T). The thalamus relays the information to the somatosensory and insular cortex, as well as cortical regions mediating different aspects of the pain experience such as affective responses in the cingulate cortex. Right – Descending pain modulation pathways: Information from the environment and certain motivational states can activate this top–down pathway. Several areas in the limbic forebrain including the anterior cingulate and insular cortex, nuclei in the amygdala and the hypothalamus (H), project to the midbrain periaqueductal grey (PAG), which then modulates ascending pain transmission from the afferent pain system indirectly through the rostral ventromedial medulla (RVM) in the brainstem. This modulating system produces analgesia by the release of endogenous opioids, and uses ON- and OFF-cells to exert either inhibitory (green) or facilitatory (red) control of nociceptive signals at the spinal dorsal horn.

attributions

Modification and adaptation, addition of Noba Link to Learning and CrashCourse video. Provided by: Lumen Learning. LicenseCC BY: Attribution

The Other SensesAuthored by: OpenStax College.  LicenseCC BY: Attribution.

Touch and Pain, information on mechanoreceptors through the power of the mindAuthored by: Guro E. Loseth, Dan-Mikael Ellingson, and Siri Leknes .  LicenseCC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

definition

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Touch and Pain Copyright © by Utah Tech University Psychology Department is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book